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You say that like it's a bad thing. Not everyone thinks so.

The eSafety office is actually perfectly reasonable, minus the stupid woman running the joint. She is incompetent as fuck and clearly clueless.

The eSafety Commissioner should be elected, especially since the changes impact every day Australians, with no ability to have a say on the matters.

Yes. Isn’t effective regulation of dangerous products wonderful.

They probably should at least update it -- I don't think a government should recommend free VPN services. Too many of them are a form of botnet, malware, ddos, etc.

What?

First observed by Tom Leher in the early 1970s

Most people probably don't "give away freedom" in some explicit bargain. They accept one small exception at a time: this restriction is for children, this one is for safety, this one is only for bad actors, this one is temporary

I don't think 1984 is naive and there's maybe a certain naivete in comparing the UK protecting kids from porn to the 1984 type stuff - torture chambers for thought criminals and the like.

>It assumes that people will fight for their freedom and insane measures will be needed to keep them in check.

No it doesn't make that assumption? The crazy tricks are for the engaged, for the outer party members. The proles just get bread and circuses.

Nineteen Eighty-Four is a further rumination on how Joseph Stalin held power. It was meant to inform Orwell's fellow English socialists, who still dreamed of their own revolution, what the practical upshot of that would be. Stalin did not rule by people ceding their freedoms in exchange for comfort; they suffered intense hardship! Their land was taken from them, dwellings and vehicles allotted based on party loyalty and forced labour regardless of wage. But Stalin ruled through fear, within his party and without. His secret police looked everywhere for dissent and punished it severely. They bugged people, followed people, cultivated informers, asked children to inform on their parents, tried to instill loyalty to the state over and above their own family... they "disappeared" people (either shooting them or sending them to gulags), sometimes entire families. To send a message to any other potential rebels. And unsurprisingly, people wanted out. It was already illegal to leave the USSR without permission, the Berlin Wall was just the most prominent part of that. One of the reasons people stayed in the USSR was because even if they had a chance to escape, they knew the party would punish their family. This is the real world that Orwell amped up. The "memory hole" is code for Soviet censorship, which was rife - see the NKVD commissar vanish here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_images_in_the_So...

You're extremely naive about China. Do you think they wanted the Great Leap Forward and the Eliminate Sparrows campaign? One man's ill-informed policies caused a famine resulting in 15-55 million deaths. The One Child Policy? The state response to Tiananmen Square protests? The Great Firewall? The Social Credit system? Why does Foxconn have anti-suicide nets? You think industry tycoons being in bed with government is bad? It is! Now note that the theory of the Three Represents is part of the Chinese Constitution. Ask yourself why notionally independent Hong Kong imprisoned a large number of pro-democracy campaigners. These are not signs of a benevolent dictatorship. It's a totalitarian state maintaining its dominance over the masses and its elites revelling in the spoils. Why do you think there is such a push by rich Chinese to get their capital out of the country?

Perhaps you should read Brave New World instead?

Which is why I like "Brave new World" a lot more.

It actually asks hard questions and explores the tradeoff of an "utopian dystopia." In contrast to the society Orwell describes, where the government is cartoonishly evil, the one of "Brave New World" genuinely cares for the happiness of its subjects, and most of its subjects are genuinely happy, even if we disagree with the methods that it uses. This is by design; I read somewhere that Orwell wanted to position 1984 in explicit contract to Huxley, killing any debate on whether his described society was better or worse than the one the book was written in.

I think he heavily underestimated the human ability to ferret out the truth when the only thing the state gives them is lies. Even without access to reliable news sources, most people will at least realize that the news is lying to them. Even if they don't know what the truth is, they'll know that it's not what they're told it is.

I think the key to a working dystopia is to genuinely make people's lives pleasant. We care about the economics a lot more than we care about the politics. If you're a free democratic socialist republic and decrease people's monthly meat rations, citizens will riot and demand true democracy. If you are a democracy and the price of meat goes up due to the bird flu epidemic, people will riot and demand communism and wealth redistribution.

Times would be tough if we could only express thoughts noone thought before.

> What an original thought.

Novel analysis here by IshKebab. :P

It’s better to hide conflicts of interest?

(Edit: I don’t disagree with Mozilla’s position, but failure to declare an obvious conflict of interest undermines their credibility.)

The foundation does get some of its funding from the corporation, though.

You have stated everything in your answer. I want to point out that the problematic starts with who controls the safety. Yes tech-constructors should be obligated to build their software such that the end-user can exercise any kind of required control and yes the parent should be liable. None of this require the government forcing identity through the OS layer.

Parents have the tools already here in the UK.

ISPs come with adult content disabled by default and someone has to opt in to it. Every major OS (Windows, Mac, iOS, android) ships with device level parental controls. Games consoles enforce these based on birth date. ISPs here also provide free network level filtering on top of that. All of this only matters if the parents don’t bypass them when asked.

If a kid is determined enough to get past Apple family controls and the network level filtering on their home network, they’ll have a VPN from a dodgy source in 15 minutes. The solution is to use the tools that are there right now, or accept that age verification is coming for everything.

The part I don’t totally understand with the age verification laws is that as I understand it, the websites need to implement the age verification. It seems like the bad actors just won’t do that, and we could’ve made compliance easier for the good actors by just requiring something like the Restricted to Adults label as a meta tag.

https://www.rtalabel.org/

“Properly” is the choice of the parent, except in some narrow cases we’ve defined culturally.

The last thing we need is society deciding in detail how children should be raised. CPS horror stories are bad enough as it is.

> It doesn't answer the question of "what do we do about parents that don't do their job properly."

Define “properly” and how often do the self-righteous themselves cause harm. I see a strong desire for people to want to “control” all outcomes on everything and have everyone in the world think and say and act as they want.

We don't hold parents responsible for most neglect. Why is this special?

> It doesn't answer the question of "what do we do about parents that don't do their job properly."

Nor can it, because it takes a village to raise a human being.

And in this (global) village, we have determined that we will monetise everything... and for the victims, there's thoughts and prayers. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoughts_and_prayers

It has always been the responsibility of parents to raise their children "properly" (whatever that means). What is special about internet access that now requires the government to legislate for it, and as a side-effect, greatly reduce the privacy of the rest of the population. This is without even addressing the argument that these measures may even make the privacy situation for children worse.

These systems won’t work any better than identification requirements for alcohol and tobacco or anything else. Maybe you didn’t know anyone who drank or smoked when you were a teenager but they are pretty widespread even when parents aren’t negligent. Systems like the proposed ones will be even easier for kids to find a way around.

I’m somewhat in favour of these foolish attempts at control because they always drive innovation in technology to circumvent them and adoption of that technology creating a thriving underground scene. Content piracy and alternative platforms could use a resurgence and this is just the thing to get it jumpstarted.

>It doesn't answer the question of "what do we do about parents that don't do their job properly."

Like with normal cases - have court go over this.

But decision if any form of age lock should be implemented or not is up to parents. You cannot just shift argument to "you HAVE to restrict children from internet or else!"

Since it is fashionable tiktok subject nowadays, you do it like genx and boomers.

We turned out alright.

Did you ever heard a parent asking for this in the real world? Parents who care either don't give smartphones, or dumbed-down ones that they can control.

Asking for less tech at school is not an authoritarian move, but rather a point of view about how schools should work.

If you asked me, I think that parents should throw away their TVs and minimize screen time at home, both for them and the kids. However I won't ask this to be enforced by the State - if anything, it will make my kids more competitive against the cartoons-infused ones of the other parents.

I do not think parents are the one pushing these controls. They are busy raising the kids.

> It is frightening how eagerly parents want to give up freedom for everyone,

It's not like parents have much of a choice. When you gotta work 2 jobs to barely make rent and groceries, you need some sort of "safe space" to pawn your children off to.

> how eagerly parents want to give up freedom for everyone

...is there evidence that it's parents who are the constituency you describe?

> It is frightening how eagerly parents want to give up

... every aspect of parenting.

I did not say anything about protecting kids from big tech or the state?

Even if I had, your argument is we must surveil more to protect the kids from the surveillance state?

So your solution to preventing "surveillance state" is to unmask everyone on the internet? Now who has the inconsistent argument

It's not being reductive at all. I'm certain parent commentor doesn't have kids so they don't care. If someone was using the street outside their house to deal drugs and causing problems they would be happy for the police to "regulate" that activity.

It's just selfishness. "I want some privacy utopia on the internet (which can no longer exist, the internet isn't the place of the 90s and early 00s), so your kids can be exploited by social media and porn".

A single parent, definitely.

A group of parents? I’m more hoepeful.

(In my country,) There are many levels of government between the individual and the nation. Sometimes that is a curse. But sometimes change needs to start locally. This is an excellent example.

Harms to adults. No children should be on the platforms, and it's up to the parents to regulate it.

Take it off them when they're not in school.

What age are you worried about?

> Mozilla have picked a battle that will kill off Firefox, I am now not longer interested in recommending or using it

Presumably your support is for a browser developed by Google instead, as they are clearly not interested in surveillance or being in your children’s life?

every corporation is running a vpn network. Every router manufacturer builds them into the firmware so you can safely access your home network. there’s a much bigger use case than free stuff.

>Everyone knows VPNs are only used for getting shit for free,

I don't use my vpn for 'shit for free'.

Why should I be responsible for raising someone else's children or give a shit if they see porn? Who cares.

Sounds like you made a decision you regret and expect everyone else to bend their life around you. It is selfish to assume others will take care of your shitty kids.

I think North Korea is attempting to do this, for example by punishing not only the criminal but also their immediate family to a life-sentence in working camps, if the person commits severe enough crime.

I don't think it's as successful as it sounds on paper, from the comfort of our western society homes.

you're describing a cage

Probably the massive hangover I have. Sorry.

VPNS need money to operate, and money businesses have anchors in the real, physical, brick-and-mortar world, which is ultimately under control of the British police, with their extendable batons and prison bars.

If you make money by laying asphalt on British streets and get paid in British pounds, there's no way for you to pay an internet business in Malta if the British government doesn't want you to. Sure, there's crypto, but crypto needs businesses which let it interface with the British banking system, which the UK government can instruct banks to shut down.

The technology bit doesn't really matter though.

The real problem is that the legislation would bring the power to prosecute people who use them or use it against them.

The security services aren't having any of that shit because it puts their position at risk both from the front-facing side and recommendations and guidance issued and from their own operations.

That’s because they don’t want to stop VPNs, they want to criminalise the ones they don’t have visibility into.

Their job is also to secure national infrastructure. Compromising that through policy would do more damage.

> to arbitrarily age-limit something that doesn’t have to be age limited

There is evidence of a growing consensus that this does have to be age limited. Both in the research and in voter polls. (I personally believe in it.)

> it will inevitably be worked around by motivated 13 year olds

The same goes for liquor and cigarette laws. They're still of net benefit.

That don’t really work because this isn’t a nation state level enforced system, and realistically the only state that can force such a thing is the US. If they worked, we wouldn’t be here having this discussion.

... that don't need the identity of the parents to work.

Nor do these devices require the identity of non-parents who will never enable the childproofing mode

Nor does legislation invert the burden of proof and require the device's manufacturer obtain and store identity documents just to use the devices, otherwise it must restrict all access to a small handful of "kid safe" actions.

These aren't "child safety" laws, they're "adult anonymity eradication" laws

> If they sign up a child, they get fined. Everyone is then incentivized to come up with solutions.

This already is the threat, and all the solutions social media comes up with are eerily “Age Verification” shaped. They are all going to be shitty.

Because your "solution" creates massive privacy violations unless age verification and age assurance are banned, and result in even larger fines.

Did you actually read the post that you’re replying to?

not if the fingerprint code is coming from the first party server which is the case for most modern malware.

They do what makes money, or what they think will make money.

There is a huge difference between supporting the regulation of algorithmic feeds and other dark patterns and a direct attack on personal privacy.

How old are you? I had the internet too but my homeland is already gone. Forums are empty, IRC channels quiet. It's just garbage run by adtech companies now.

Who knows?

Sexualization of teens is a thing. I personally blame social media together with showbusiness. But kids had access to the internet at the same time.

And the internet was slightly different than it's now. It had much more sharp edges that we learned how to live with.

But it also was much less predatory. World's smartest psychologists and programmers didn't work 80 hour weeks for small fortunes to make it as much addictive as possible.. if it was only that. It's also as triggering and depressing as possible, because distressed and depressed people are engaging more and can't stop.

What I mean to say is that you can't really draw an equal sign between internet we grew up with and the one we give (or choose to limit) to our children.

I don't mean we should block them, just that it's not the same.

We are many things, but "fine" isn't one of them.

How much the problems today are due to, rather than coincidental with, the internet, is a much more difficult thing to discern.

I would be one of those two generations. I dispute your point on two grounds: first, the internet today isn't what it was back then; secondly, I, and many of my peers, didn't turn out just fine.

Back then the internet was a wild west run by thousands of clever people. It was like living in a neighborhood full of people kind of like you. Nobody built it to be addictive or to cultivate attention. If you wanted something you searched for it. Nowadays everyone is on there and it's run by evil adtech companies. Kids these days are not having the experience we had back then.

It also didn't really do us much good. Already back then geeky types like me had somewhere to retreat to and we did. It took me years to learn real social skills and build a life off of the internet. When I see headlines like "Gen Z aren't having sex" I'm hardly surprised. They're not having sex because they're on the internet. What's more is nobody is learning to be an adult at all. People are in a adult bodies but still totally children at heart. They don't own anything, shun responsibility etc.