Better I give a little bit of pii than some kid grows up too early.
Would you be able to tell the difference if this policy came from a place of compassion?
And at no point does it ever occur to you to demand proof that measures such as this will have the desired effect... or, indeed, that the desired effect is indeed worth achieving at all.
I agree though, most information is misinformation, even the most popular stuff, Joe Rogan et al.
I really wish all this time, effort, and money was spent on educating our kids to safely navigate the online world.
It's not like they'll magically figure it out for themselves once they turn 17.
I don't see kids being banned from reading history books, which would be more like the world you're describing, I see a country which is pretty multicultural and open minded trying it's best to protect itself from the absolute nonsense that circulates online. When I was a kid, I could only watch certain TV shows because my bed time was 7:30-8pm, that's when the "naughty stuff" came on TV. Was that the ministry of truth at work?
Do you have any idea what kids are exposed to now ? I mean the answer is probably, no, you have no idea. But judging by the rot I see my younger friends and family members watch and regurgitate, I can tell you, it's not great.
Nothing screams "fear mongering" like comparing with living in Soviet Russia.
Look, we can argue all day. There is no right or wrong answer. I don't fully support the govts initiative but I also don't want Meta/X/Google to have unlimited powers like they do in the US.
You probably should have started your censorship campaign with the usual bugaboos -- comics, video games, porno mags -- and not with history books.
The UK PM and the AU PM backed the US position and sent troops in (in the AU case they even sent in advance rangers | commandos | SASR to scout and call targets from ground) but they were both aware the "justification" and WMD claims were BS.
https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/halliburton-australia-p...
Been ongoing for a while now: https://roncobb.net/img/cartoons/aus/k5092-on-Tucker_Box-cuu...
Various large US tech companies played a central role in drafting this initiative. I don't think you're reasoning about this clearly.
How exactly does this curtail their powers?
This has lead to serious problems in the case of the Afghan war, where it was clear that this whole conflict had nothing to do with Australia, could not even vaguely be construed as "defence", achieved nothing, cost Australian lives, and was a completely fabricated mess that we got into for really bad reasons (I paraphrase). The SAS war crimes thing was a symptom of our unease at our involvement (imho) - we would not normally question the things that soldiers do in conflict, this was more a way of questioning why we were in the conflict in the first place.
Afterwards the same people who employed this rhetoric claimed they, "Always knew the claims were false".
There was definite risk of loss of political capital for would be dissenters. Politicians may or may not have had skeptical reservations. It is moot point if they didn't proactively dissent. Similarly, it isn't especially meaningful in the context of this discussion if those who did dissent were locked out of popular media discourse. The overall media environment repeated the claims unquestioningly. Dissent was maligned as conspiracy theory.
Another interesting manifestation were those who claimed that WMDs were found. Clearly the goal posts were shifted here. Between those who were "always suspicious" and those who believe that the standards of WMDs were met, very few people remain who concede that they were hoodwinked by the propaganda narrative. Yet at the same time, it isn't a stretch to observe that a war or series of wars was started based on false premises. No one has been held to account.
What you describe is more like the debate on continental Europe, which translated in little support (most countries provided help with logistics and minimal "peacekeeping").
Literally right there in the bill, showing your papers and the company collecting is just as much of an offense as them doing nothing to stop kids from being run through the misinformation mill.
