I am Australian, the state that we have become is just sad. The fact that this is brought under the disguise of "child protection" is ridiculous and I never would have imagine a future in my own country where I have to submit my ID to access anything online. They will never achieve anything with this because everyone will just use VPN. It's costing taxpayer's money without any useful outcome. The level of incompetence displayed by this government is astonishing.
* The Labor government's failed 2010 internet filter policy, [1]
"Those who claim the government's approach is akin to the sort of political censorship practiced by authoritarian regimes are simply misleading the Australian public."
* The Liberal government's passed 2015 mandatory metadata retention laws, [2]
"Critics say Australia’s data retention scheme is mass surveillance, and metadata is used to track where people go."
because it doesn't seem like you do. I could also point to the UK's full-take surveillance apparatus, or the US, from around about the same time-frame.
It boggles my mind that they gave police a legal avenue to take over accounts and modify data a few years later:
The Surveillance Legislation Amendment (Identify and Disrupt) Act 2021 (SLAID Act) introduced new powers for Australian law enforcement to combat serious cyber-enabled crime. These powers include data disruption warrants, network activity warrants, and account takeover warrants.
Just a note - it's not just "this Government" - this is bipartisan and has a long history spanning decades. Both sides are just as incompetent as each other when it comes to technology and the Internet.
It's exactly the same kind of problem that we've always had here, summed up in 1964 by Donald Horne, "Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second rate people who share its luck. It lives on other people's ideas, and, although its ordinary people are adaptable, most of its leaders (in all fields) so lack curiosity about the events that surround them that they are often taken by surprise."
I guarantee this will be the response when this doesn't work - surprise. They'll claim it was a sure thing, that they did everything right (even though they went through multiple rounds of sham "public consultations" and ignored all the expert testimony)...
I’m not sure if there is some super secret hidden motive / conspiracy here but I do know that the internet and social media is basically poisoning politics and society. Go read about what’s happening in Japan. Some loser started a political party based on 100% lies about immigrants and vaccines destroying the country (sound familiar?) and just gained a huge share of votes in a small amount of time.
The argument you’re making is “freedom at all costs” the trouble with all of this is, can we even trust ourselves with this freedom. Your big brain might be immune to l the cruft out there but that’s not universal.
I honestly don’t know what the answer is but we’re in trouble. The reason China does what it does it not just because it’s an authoritarian hell hole, but because they know the games they play on others and don’t want it to happen to them.
I’m not sure if you’ve read 1984, but having our children brainwashed online is a great way to get us close to total authoritarianism, on the other hand you’re arguing that by having to ID yourself when logging on (let’s face it, that’s already happening) means we’re already in 1984?
There was frustration around the globe about pandemic policies. Specifically lockdowns, mask mandates, check-ins, and "no jab no job" ultimatums, which have since been identified in many places as excessive abuse of power that went beyond public health all the way into the social coercion manipulation zone.
On immigration, is it not worth listening to the concerns of locals on rising immigration numbers? On associated social unrest? Or do we label them "100% liars" and censor their words with mandated face-scanning and digital check-ins.
This how good lies work. You take an element of the truth and wrap it around the lie. Japan might very well be frustrated about immigrants but that doesn't make every complaint about immigrants true.
We need to simply take away children's access to the unfiltered internet, and we need this to be done by local device parental controls - children get iPhones that allow only a whitelisted part of the internet. We adults need to enforce it and make it a social norm, like you don't buy cigarettes for kids. Then this mass surveillance "for the children" concept can go away, and also the children really shouldn't be exposed to certain information, which we all know it when we see it, until they are old enough.
As a parent I really like googles family controls, all of it. Except ONE thing.. I cannot block or limit YouTube Shorts.
Whenever my daughter watches regular YouTube there's a good chance she might watch something creative or educational or something that ends up with her suddenly making something out of paper, or drawing or anything physical. Learning about something amazing and getting excited.
YouTube Shorts is just AI slop, and horrible content I wish never existed.
In general there needs to be a way to disable Youtube Shorts. It's a massive attention hole that preys on people in a very addiction forming way. Doubly so for people with ADHD, etc.
Yep you can use extensions but tbh they are of varying quality and youtube changes their site so much in an attempt to fight adblockers that most youtube extensions tend to be really brittle.
You could access via web browser and try this uBlock Origin list [1], props to this commenter [2] who helpfully posted it a while ago. Or if you must use a native app, on Android use a patched version of YT that supresses shorts from the view (to be honest the user agency it still allows, is for me worth enough to prefer Android over its competition)
For phones. If you use the YT app (Or logged in I think). If you disable your watch history it removes the shorts. But I wish there was another way. I use Unhook browser plugin on my computer browser.
I use brave browser and block anything related to shorts. The sound still plays in the background but the videos don't play which makes it unenjoyable. Helped me give up shorts.
I'm talking about my kid here. I think you're missing the point of what I'm talking about here. YouTube is ok for the most part, where as shorts is mostly not ok, and there's no way to turn it off.
I am Australian, the state that we have become is just sad. The fact that this is brought under the disguise of "child protection" is ridiculous and I never would have imagine a future in my own country where I have to submit my ID to access anything online. They will never achieve anything with this because everyone will just use VPN. It's costing taxpayer's money without any useful outcome. The level of incompetence displayed by this government is astonishing.
As an Australian, do you remember:
* The Labor government's failed 2010 internet filter policy, [1] "Those who claim the government's approach is akin to the sort of political censorship practiced by authoritarian regimes are simply misleading the Australian public."
* The Liberal government's passed 2015 mandatory metadata retention laws, [2] "Critics say Australia’s data retention scheme is mass surveillance, and metadata is used to track where people go."
because it doesn't seem like you do. I could also point to the UK's full-take surveillance apparatus, or the US, from around about the same time-frame.
This is a long term project.
[1] https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/internet-filter-is-not-c...
[2] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-08-17/metadata-retention-pr...
It boggles my mind that they gave police a legal avenue to take over accounts and modify data a few years later:
The Surveillance Legislation Amendment (Identify and Disrupt) Act 2021 (SLAID Act) introduced new powers for Australian law enforcement to combat serious cyber-enabled crime. These powers include data disruption warrants, network activity warrants, and account takeover warrants.
https://theconversation.com/facebook-or-twitter-posts-can-no...
Just a note - it's not just "this Government" - this is bipartisan and has a long history spanning decades. Both sides are just as incompetent as each other when it comes to technology and the Internet.
It's exactly the same kind of problem that we've always had here, summed up in 1964 by Donald Horne, "Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second rate people who share its luck. It lives on other people's ideas, and, although its ordinary people are adaptable, most of its leaders (in all fields) so lack curiosity about the events that surround them that they are often taken by surprise."
I guarantee this will be the response when this doesn't work - surprise. They'll claim it was a sure thing, that they did everything right (even though they went through multiple rounds of sham "public consultations" and ignored all the expert testimony)...
Australia is slowly copying China. They will move on banning VPNs in a year of two.
It may be government incompetence, but it might also be a plan to identify everyone online.
[dead]
The truly demoralising thing is that you can move to the more or less exact other side of the planet and you have the exact same shit going on.
[dead]
I’m not sure if there is some super secret hidden motive / conspiracy here but I do know that the internet and social media is basically poisoning politics and society. Go read about what’s happening in Japan. Some loser started a political party based on 100% lies about immigrants and vaccines destroying the country (sound familiar?) and just gained a huge share of votes in a small amount of time.
The argument you’re making is “freedom at all costs” the trouble with all of this is, can we even trust ourselves with this freedom. Your big brain might be immune to l the cruft out there but that’s not universal.
I honestly don’t know what the answer is but we’re in trouble. The reason China does what it does it not just because it’s an authoritarian hell hole, but because they know the games they play on others and don’t want it to happen to them.
I’m not sure if you’ve read 1984, but having our children brainwashed online is a great way to get us close to total authoritarianism, on the other hand you’re arguing that by having to ID yourself when logging on (let’s face it, that’s already happening) means we’re already in 1984?
> "100% lies about immigrants and vaccines"
There was frustration around the globe about pandemic policies. Specifically lockdowns, mask mandates, check-ins, and "no jab no job" ultimatums, which have since been identified in many places as excessive abuse of power that went beyond public health all the way into the social coercion manipulation zone.
On immigration, is it not worth listening to the concerns of locals on rising immigration numbers? On associated social unrest? Or do we label them "100% liars" and censor their words with mandated face-scanning and digital check-ins.
This how good lies work. You take an element of the truth and wrap it around the lie. Japan might very well be frustrated about immigrants but that doesn't make every complaint about immigrants true.
We need to simply take away children's access to the unfiltered internet, and we need this to be done by local device parental controls - children get iPhones that allow only a whitelisted part of the internet. We adults need to enforce it and make it a social norm, like you don't buy cigarettes for kids. Then this mass surveillance "for the children" concept can go away, and also the children really shouldn't be exposed to certain information, which we all know it when we see it, until they are old enough.
> We adults need to enforce it and make it a social norm, like you don't buy cigarettes for kids.
We could do it using some kind of law!
I don't live in Australia, but just to be safe, I saved everything I liked. And not just that stuff. Everything!
As a parent I really like googles family controls, all of it. Except ONE thing.. I cannot block or limit YouTube Shorts.
Whenever my daughter watches regular YouTube there's a good chance she might watch something creative or educational or something that ends up with her suddenly making something out of paper, or drawing or anything physical. Learning about something amazing and getting excited.
YouTube Shorts is just AI slop, and horrible content I wish never existed.
In general there needs to be a way to disable Youtube Shorts. It's a massive attention hole that preys on people in a very addiction forming way. Doubly so for people with ADHD, etc.
you can turn it off on a PC browser with an extension.
but yeah on a device or on the network no :-( I have the same complaint
Yep you can use extensions but tbh they are of varying quality and youtube changes their site so much in an attempt to fight adblockers that most youtube extensions tend to be really brittle.
You could access via web browser and try this uBlock Origin list [1], props to this commenter [2] who helpfully posted it a while ago. Or if you must use a native app, on Android use a patched version of YT that supresses shorts from the view (to be honest the user agency it still allows, is for me worth enough to prefer Android over its competition)
[1]: https://github.com/Harren06/ublock-yt-shorts
[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43848253
For phones. If you use the YT app (Or logged in I think). If you disable your watch history it removes the shorts. But I wish there was another way. I use Unhook browser plugin on my computer browser.
I use brave browser and block anything related to shorts. The sound still plays in the background but the videos don't play which makes it unenjoyable. Helped me give up shorts.
> YouTube Shorts is just AI slop, and horrible content I wish never existed.
This is only what you watch, for me I get short form of the same content I watch on youtube video (music, games and podcasts)
I'm talking about my kid here. I think you're missing the point of what I'm talking about here. YouTube is ok for the most part, where as shorts is mostly not ok, and there's no way to turn it off.
kid reels might be AI slop
As an Australian I am disgusted by this backwards, authoritarian, ant-privacy approach.