This is actually a fantastic example of typical politics, but not in the way you’re imagining. It’s a classic poison pill. Write a bill with something good (protecting children’s privacy online, which I think we’d all agree is good) and then put something unpalatable into it (transphobia and homophobia).
Someone votes for it, “Why do you hate LGBT people?” Someone votes against it, “Why don’t you want children to have stronger privacy laws on the Internet?”
It’s exhausting and a lose-lose. That said, I prefer if they don’t vote for it and take heat for “being anti privacy”. You don’t negotiate with people’s rights.
Sometimes we actually need to act before knowing everything. What we know for a fact currently is that the number of children who think they are trans or non-binary is in a sharp rise in many countries in the west. There are guesses why this is: transactivists like to say that LBTQ+ is now accepted so these people dare to come out. The other side cite e.g. social contagion. All this is happening only in the west, somehow. If this is caused by something that is reversible, then that should be probably tried out.
If their transness is completely internal, then nothing external will affect it. If not, they might be “cured” in some sense. Being trans is utilistically negative, after all – it doesn’t make life exactly easier or better. So if its onset can be genuinely prevented, that would be a net positive for the individual.
Dunno if any of this justifies general censorship, probably not, but I think it’s complete madness that children are allowed to see everything there is to see in the internet. I think that will be quoted as one of the greatest mistakes of this century. I’m not at all surprised that their mental health is in a sustained nose dive.
Section 3a of the bill is the part that would be used to target LGBTQ content.
Sections 4 talks about adding better parental controls which would give general statistics about what their kids are doing online, without parents being able to see/helicopter in on exaxrlt what their kids were looking at. It also would force sites to give children safe defaults when they create a profile, including the ability to disable personalized recommendations, placing limitations on dark patterns designed to manipulate children to stay on platforms for longer, making their information private by default, and limiting others’ ability to find and message them without the consent of children. Notably, these settings would all be optional, but enabled by default for children/users suspected to be children.
I think the regulations described in section 4 would mostly be good things. They’re the types of settings that I’d prefer to use on my online accounts, at least. However, the bad outweighs the good here, and the content in section 3a is completely unacceptable.
Funnily enough, I had to read through the bill twice, and only caught on to how bad section 3a was on my second time reading it.
I legitimately can’t fucking stand idiots like you.
You can agree with the overall or the majority of policy decisions of a political party while still criticizing their individual decisions as people. To think your political party is somehow ‘above it’ or morally just through and through is being willfully ignorant. It’s a level of mental gymnastics that’s outright absurd.
Again, you can still vote for these people and still believe doing so increases the quality of life. And yes, we can make a distinction that one party isn’t just the ‘lesser of two evils’.
But holy fuck, seriously. Both sides voted to invade the middle east, both sides vote to increase the military budget, both sides vote to increase their own congressional benefits, and both sides play the game where you need to vote on someone’s bill to get them to vote on yours, both sides have issues with the legal loop holes of bribery, both sides take lobbiest money, etc.
Just because one is clearly better than the other doesn’t remove them from criticism and doesn’t deny the fact that they are still politicians doing political shit.
Dude you are basically Hyde from That 70s Show riffing after a joint trying to dunk on “The Man”. You never have to dog far with losers like you to find the conspiracy theories and alternative facts and we all know form there it’s a Misty mountain hop to alt right malarkey.
You are one of the dumbest people I have ever seen, ever. Your reading comprehension is so limited, I’m surprised you were even able to make an account here.
You didn’t challenge anything, you called me a conspiracy theory right winger because I said ‘politicians act like politicians’ (which is funny because I voted for Obama and I supported Sanders during his run)
Are you 14? You really seem like you just discovered that people have opinions other than yours and if they aren’t 100% the same.then obviously they’re alt right
Are you starting to see the cracks in the foundation? Are you starting to see how the game is played?
This is actually a fantastic example of typical politics, but not in the way you’re imagining. It’s a classic poison pill. Write a bill with something good (protecting children’s privacy online, which I think we’d all agree is good) and then put something unpalatable into it (transphobia and homophobia).
Someone votes for it, “Why do you hate LGBT people?” Someone votes against it, “Why don’t you want children to have stronger privacy laws on the Internet?”
It’s exhausting and a lose-lose. That said, I prefer if they don’t vote for it and take heat for “being anti privacy”. You don’t negotiate with people’s rights.
Is it protecting children? Claims need evidence and rules need tests. Until we do that its fear-based, exploitable control for the sake of control.
Government doesn’t run on the scientific method, sadly.
Yeah that’s the problem with legislation like this. You’ll have proponents claim it protects children without actually explaining how.
Sometimes we actually need to act before knowing everything. What we know for a fact currently is that the number of children who think they are trans or non-binary is in a sharp rise in many countries in the west. There are guesses why this is: transactivists like to say that LBTQ+ is now accepted so these people dare to come out. The other side cite e.g. social contagion. All this is happening only in the west, somehow. If this is caused by something that is reversible, then that should be probably tried out.
If their transness is completely internal, then nothing external will affect it. If not, they might be “cured” in some sense. Being trans is utilistically negative, after all – it doesn’t make life exactly easier or better. So if its onset can be genuinely prevented, that would be a net positive for the individual.
Dunno if any of this justifies general censorship, probably not, but I think it’s complete madness that children are allowed to see everything there is to see in the internet. I think that will be quoted as one of the greatest mistakes of this century. I’m not at all surprised that their mental health is in a sustained nose dive.
Please explain in detail how this bill does a single good thing for children.
Section 3a of the bill is the part that would be used to target LGBTQ content.
Sections 4 talks about adding better parental controls which would give general statistics about what their kids are doing online, without parents being able to see/helicopter in on exaxrlt what their kids were looking at. It also would force sites to give children safe defaults when they create a profile, including the ability to disable personalized recommendations, placing limitations on dark patterns designed to manipulate children to stay on platforms for longer, making their information private by default, and limiting others’ ability to find and message them without the consent of children. Notably, these settings would all be optional, but enabled by default for children/users suspected to be children.
I think the regulations described in section 4 would mostly be good things. They’re the types of settings that I’d prefer to use on my online accounts, at least. However, the bad outweighs the good here, and the content in section 3a is completely unacceptable.
Funnily enough, I had to read through the bill twice, and only caught on to how bad section 3a was on my second time reading it.
I don’t know that it does. If bills and the discourse around them were actually about the stated topic, it would be revolutionary to politics.
The only cracks here is that the senate are all a bunch of olds who don’t understand the internet.
This tbh…
They fear what thy don’t understand…
Sure they do, it is a series of tubes.
Actually no, and furthermore I reject your ‘both sides’ rhetoric wholesale.
I legitimately can’t fucking stand idiots like you.
You can agree with the overall or the majority of policy decisions of a political party while still criticizing their individual decisions as people. To think your political party is somehow ‘above it’ or morally just through and through is being willfully ignorant. It’s a level of mental gymnastics that’s outright absurd.
Again, you can still vote for these people and still believe doing so increases the quality of life. And yes, we can make a distinction that one party isn’t just the ‘lesser of two evils’.
But holy fuck, seriously. Both sides voted to invade the middle east, both sides vote to increase the military budget, both sides vote to increase their own congressional benefits, and both sides play the game where you need to vote on someone’s bill to get them to vote on yours, both sides have issues with the legal loop holes of bribery, both sides take lobbiest money, etc.
Just because one is clearly better than the other doesn’t remove them from criticism and doesn’t deny the fact that they are still politicians doing political shit.
Unstick your head from your ass, ffs
Dude you are basically Hyde from That 70s Show riffing after a joint trying to dunk on “The Man”. You never have to dog far with losers like you to find the conspiracy theories and alternative facts and we all know form there it’s a Misty mountain hop to alt right malarkey.
Go sell crazy somewhere else.
Anyone that doesn’t support the party is an evil right wing monster and must be destroyed by any means!
You’re the crazy and dangerous one here
Anyone asserting that the party who dog-whsitles Nazis to threaten democracy is ‘just like all the others’ is a dangerous idiot. At best.
You are one of the dumbest people I have ever seen, ever. Your reading comprehension is so limited, I’m surprised you were even able to make an account here.
You went on a multi-paragraph rant about a subject you know next to nothing about
I love how you think you can gleam my understanding of a subject from a single comment
Congratulations on your poor interpolation skills
You contributed nothing to this conversation, I hope you feel useless
Lol look how pissy you get when your BS is challenged. That’s how we can tell you are immature and probably a moron.
You didn’t challenge anything, you called me a conspiracy theory right winger because I said ‘politicians act like politicians’ (which is funny because I voted for Obama and I supported Sanders during his run)
Are you 14? You really seem like you just discovered that people have opinions other than yours and if they aren’t 100% the same.then obviously they’re alt right
That’s not what they said though