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#21

Off the Record / Re: Australia begins enforcing...

Last post by Sheilbh - December 10, 2025, 10:14:21 PM

I think it is a bad idea for kids to have social media accounts and be on social media.

However...this is unenforceable and to the extent it is enforceable it will have disastrous consequences. We are seeing something similar with the State of Texas' war on internet porn. They are implementing a bunch of catastrophically bad and privacy destroying measures and have yet to actually keep anybody from internet porn.

Yeah as I said when we were talking about the Online Safety Act and porn I do think this is coming more broadly in the world and larger and larger parts of the internet will be age-gated. In principle I don't have an issue with that. 15 year olds are not allowed to go into a sex shop and buy a porn DVD (if either of those things still exist) - I'm not totally clear why the internet should be different.

I prefer the Aussie approach which is cleaner and about services. While in the UK (and in parts of European law through the DSA/DMA) it's more about age-gating content. I think that puts power back in the hands of the platforms to make judgement calls of what is or isn't safe, who should or shouldn't see it. I think it raises genuine issues of free speech.

Having said that I take yours and DG's point. The age verification companies are a mixed bag and on the day the Online Safety Act went online there was an ID verification company in the US who announced they'd suffered a masive hack. I think those two are going to interact in quite difficult ways and I'm not fully sure I have an answer. I would say ID verification is an area where there are good private companies who have built good tools but there's a lot who seem shady as shit.

[you'll have to seriously intrude upon the privacy of adults]

#22

Off the Record / Re: Australia begins enforcing...

Last post by mongers - December 10, 2025, 10:07:46 PM

Yeah, my concern was that in order to enforce the ban against teens, you'll have to seriously intrude upon the privacy of adults (if nothing else so that they can prove that they're not teens).  That said, I do hope that it will be a success, because I think social media is a poison.

Google have been raping your privacy for decades now.

#23

Off the Record / Re: Australia begins enforcing...

Last post by Sheilbh - December 10, 2025, 10:02:49 PM

I'm very strongly supportive - and I'd go further and ban smartphones for under 16s.

I think Australia's really leading the way on tech stuff (see also the news bargaining code). The big tech companies have thrown tantrums - I think Facebook temporarily shut down in Australia - but have ultimately all had to go along with it. I think Australian politician seem admirably free of the learned helplessness we see elsewhere.

I would add that one aspect that is helpful is Murdoch. Obviously in no way have you got to hand it to Rupert Murdoch, but he's not a tech tycoon. He doesn't own a social media platform. His business is making content of various times. Australia has one of the most cosolidated news media landscapes in the world (basically Murdoch plus other media moguls and the odd mining billionaire) - but they all probably have an interest in making the American social media companies' pips squeak

#24

Off the Record / Re: What does a TRUMP presiden...

Last post by Razgovory - December 10, 2025, 09:56:30 PM

I thought Raz would be happy about dead Venezuelans. First of all, they're brown. Second, Venezuela = Iran = Hezbollah = Hamas.

Every single event in the universe is tied to Jew hatred from leftists.

 

The fuck you talking about?

#25

Off the Record / Re: The EU thread

Last post by Sheilbh - December 10, 2025, 09:55:28 PM

IMO, it shows the value of seriously investing in influence operations. Russia has - I think - put much more concerted effort into wooing influential individuals (Murdoch, Musk, Orban, etc etc), financing allied parties, and pioneering online internet influence operations.

By any rational metric, Russia does not belong at that table. Except the one metric that lots of influential parties and individuals feel it serves their own interest to act as if Russia does belong at that table.

I kind of disagree on this. I think we're moving into a hard-edged, hard power multipolar world.

You don't get a seat at the table because of who you are, or who you were or the values you believe yourself to embody, or because of "international law" but because of agency. You can decide to do something and can then do it - I'd point that even on the tech front. Russia, like China (and to an extent Iran) have built their own digital infrastructure (payment systems, social media, search, AI etc) precisely because they've had to or want to avoid reliance on the US.

It's not a positve actor in my view, but whether it's Ukraine, the Middle East or Africa, Russia is a state with agency in the world in a way that Europe simply isn't (possible exception for the French). I'd add the Caucasus, Middle East and Africa are particularly striking because I think they're regions where there has been Euro-Russian competition.

#26

Off the Record / Re: The EU thread

Last post by Sheilbh - December 10, 2025, 09:44:48 PM

Trouble I see is there are European firms operating I most of those spaces.
Eutelsat, STmicroelectronics... But these tend to be also rans at best. Something is stopping them ever reaching the heights of the American companies.
When we do get genuine world leaders like Arm, we sell them off.

Yeah I like the idea but the lack of support and capital for building up is a big challenge, plus Europe is the only part of the world that genuinely, ideologically, naively believed in the "liberal rules based order". So until recently we didn't block takeovers. I think that has shifed a bit - see the recent kerfuffle over Nexperia in the Netherlands (and interestingly the Chinese firm involved tried to buy a British chips firm and was, after a big campaign, blocked by Johnson's government on national security grounds for fears it would try to do exactly what it seems to have been doing with Nexperia).

But also over-regulation and risk averseness is a real problem in this area. I think the EU understanding of itself as a "regulatory superpower" means it sees regulation as an end in itself. Particularly in the context of digital stuff and particularly after the experience of GDPR which was a ground- breaking piece of law which was copied (with adaptations) by jurisdictions all over the world.

The EU keeps chasing that high and passing very sweeping tech regulations. I've mentioned before but I was at a conference recently with other European tech lawyers and a knowledge lawyer from one of the law firms did a slide of upcoming EU tech regulations and there was an audible groan. There's a huge volume of regulation coming down the pline and we already deal with a lot in this area.

In part I think it is precisely because Europe doesn't have those companies that we instead "lead" by regulating. Thierry Breton who was the Commissioner in charge of the AI Act made this point. He basically said that lots of EU institutions and politicians were celebrating the fact that the EU had passed the world's first general AI law, but that it is very much second prize to actually having European AI companies. He called for massive investment annd building of sovereign digital infrastructure - and in fairness Mistral AI is French and good (but it's the only one off the top of my head). A lot of the European institutions I think are fundamentally more comfortable regulating the American and Chinese companies providing the services than creating a looser, riskier regulatory context in which European coumpanies could more easily experiment.

I also think as well as the slight high on their own supply approach post-GDPR it sort of goes to the nature of European politics. Because it relies so much on "output" legitimacy it is normally framed around doing "something" - that is the mark of being effective in European politics and in part that there isn't a European demos politics can appeal to or make their case to.

#27

Off the Record / Re: Australia begins enforcing...

Last post by DGuller - December 10, 2025, 09:35:18 PM

Yeah, my concern was that in order to enforce the ban against teens, you'll have to seriously intrude upon the privacy of adults (if nothing else so that they can prove that they're not teens).  That said, I do hope that it will be a success, because I think social media is a poison.

#28

Off the Record / Re: What does a TRUMP presiden...

Last post by Zoupa - December 10, 2025, 09:22:57 PM

I thought Raz would be happy about dead Venezuelans. First of all, they're brown. Second, Venezuela = Iran = Hezbollah = Hamas.

Every single event in the universe is tied to Jew hatred from leftists.

 

#29

Off the Record / Re: The EU thread

Last post by HisMajestyBOB - December 10, 2025, 08:52:57 PM

Russia is absolutely winning the influence game. Social media, and our unwillingness to do shit about anything, will be the West's downfall.

#30

Off the Record / Re: The AI dooooooom thread

Last post by HisMajestyBOB - December 10, 2025, 08:50:08 PM

I've stopped buying ebooks or books from unknown authors if they were written after 2023. Too high a risk of just buying slop.

Searching the web also sucks horribly now unless I stick with known sites.