fucking australia’s trying to get everyone to link their government id to their social media accounts else you cant use them anymore, the actual fuck is wrong with this country
please, actually, get fucking mad over this, the entirety of australia basically just banned all social media for anyone who doesnt want to give up their privacy to the government, there was no vote on this, no nothing, they just went ahead and fucking passed this ridiculously privy law and barely anybody’s talking about it the actual fuck
okay so to actually explain what exactly is happening, it’s an age thing. theyve used ‘protect the children’ and ‘let kids be kids’ as a weapon again. anyone under 16 is banned from social media, but to enforce this they have openly admitted everyone will need to link their government id to their social media. this whole ‘protect the kids’ thing was a very obvious trojan horse for getting ppl to give up their privacy.
and yknow, that alone is a very shitty law even without the whole surrendering your private information to the government thing.
theyve made outside uninhabitable, there’s nowhere left to go. public areas have degenerated, theyve turned hanging out into a crime with loitering, streets feel unwalkable sometimes, parents are more wary of letting their kids walk around on their own than they used to be, and now theyre trying to ban one of the main ways kids manage to distract themselves inside the house.
when i was 15 i was depressed and lonely, unable to leave the house very far, no friends, nobody. the one place that helped me feel less alone was online communities. i wouldve killed myself if it werent for the support i recieved on there. and now theyre trying to ban that for future generations, in a world that hates them being both outside and inside.
and even still, this is still a fucking trojan horse to get you to give up your privacy.
By the way, if anyone wants to throw the Senate Committee hearing with Greens senator David Shoebridge questioning Jenny McAllister at me, then no, what he was implying is not right. The e-safety commissioner’s 2023 roadmap for age verification supports a double-blind approach using tokens. People would verify their ages with a third party who already has their age data (e.g. bank, phone company) who then issues a token that gets used as a digital confirmation of users being of age. This is to ensure that age-restricted websites do not know the identity of a user, and the age assurance service provider does not record which sites a user visits. That’s the theory and a tender was awarded to ACCS on November 15, 2024 to test the process and see if it will work.
If this proposal was passed into law as it stands now - you could break the law and no one would do anything apart from tut at you.
Because it’s unenforceable.
So yeah, don’t worry that this is a problem now because it’s not.
This entire proposal is a signal flag for the 2025 federal election by both Labor and the Coalition parties to tell the voting public that they take parental concerns seriously… without doing anything to actually alleviate those concerns.
Concentrate instead on contacting your federal MPs and telling them exactly how you’d like the original problem - kids being exposed to unsuitable material on social media and the mental health consequences.
tl:dr - Don’t get side tracked by this furphy, do your research and go tell your MP what YOU want.
sorry, im really not sure i buy all this.
but yeah, i did get a lot of things wrong here. some that i cleared up in other reblogs, but the version you reblogged was the one that got the most popular unfortunately. i wish people would reblog the other version more.
first off i want to say, this was never intended to be a massive informational post. this was originally random venting i did while half asleep, not even tagged if i remember right. my blog’s not exactly popular, i never expected it to be this big. ive managed to clear some things up in the comments and reblogs tho.
my use of the word ‘basically’ was pretty poor here, i never intended to imply it had already been passed, just that it was very likely to be passed and everybody besides the greens is on board with it. it is very likely to pass. but no, it has not passed. only more reason to get angry about it in my opinion, means there’s time.
secondly, yes, the method has not been fully decided on yet, that was included in the article i limked, and i hope it wouldnt be giving companies your id, but that’s a very real possibility, and the other methods ive seen i just dont feel would hold up well. id has been the main method that’s been talked about here, im not super comforted by ‘but they could use this other thing’. and i couldnt see corporations giving up the chance to collect more personal data unless they had good reason not to, and everything ive seen on it says the burden will be on the corporations. so unless that info’s wrong, that sounds like something to panic about. but yes, it does feel wrong to be making it out as if it could only been that, i shouldve mentioned that in the original post.
look, i like you doing all this, these are some good resources, my original post was a half asleep vent, it was bound to have inaccuracies or misinformation, and im sorry about that, i really am.
but where i really stop following you is when you say this proposal has no teeth.
especially because ive felt the exact same way for a while, and even in my original post, i knew it had ‘no teeth’ in a way, but i didnt say anything on it because i didnt see it as important enough. yes, i shouldve still mentioned it anyway, that there will be ways to get around it. but i didnt mention it bc it’s still dangerous.
there would be no penalties for users who managed to access social media without going through the check, i know, i was never expecting that, only someone who has little idea on how the internet works would expect that. even if the burden werent on the platforms, nobody’s going to take notice of a single under 16 year old slipping into social media. if they managed to do that id be wondering why im not locked up for pirating all the shit i have.
no, anybody tech savvy enough could find ways around this law, if not a vpn then something else.
i was never afraid of the law because i truly thought id have to hand over my id to social media or stop using it. that’s not the fucking problem. the fear i have for myself is the inconvenience of having to setup a vpn just to browse tumblr, but not everyone is tech savvy enough to find ways around these laws, most people arent, most social media users would probably just end up giving up their id or stop using it. and that could be a fucking problem. maybe a cybersecurity nightmare, but also just blatantly allowing and normalising more absurd data collection, more privacy invasion. even without all that, the bandaid solution of locking children out of social media instead of tackling the actual problem infuriates me.
and the biggest thing im worried about is the precedent. this law is fucking absurd, even if it can be easily broken without punishment. weilding kids’ safety as a weapon, banning an entire group of people from one of the largest ways of communicating today, allowing companies to force id collection if they so wish, even if they all go a different way those other ways dont sound very good either. a law like being considered and especially passing isnt a good sign for the future.
the best i can hope for besides the law not passing at all is that the companies will fail to enforce it so badly that it causes something awful, like, idk, the system being unsustainable somehow, some massive data breach. which no, wouldnt be a good thing, but itd hopefully set the precedent not to try anymore laws like this, instead of being a precedent to keep going.
look, pull me up on my mistakes all you like. other people have done what youve done here and i appreciate it, actually. i never expected this to get as big as it did, i made mistakes here.
but dont bloody well tell me this law isnt worth anybody’s attention and we should all just ignore it and ‘not get side tracked’. i think i have every right to be worried about this, and your reasoning for why i shouldnt be worried was just telling me things i already knew.
course this law is still a fuckin problem, a portion of the population knowing how to bypass it and not get punished doesnt change anything.
and look, im genuinely sorry about this but im not gonna be replying to whatever response you’ve already been planning out as you read this, im probably not even gonna see it considering the amount of notifications i get every minute. correct me if i got any objective information wrong, but im bloody tired of all this, ive been hearing so much depressing shit these past couple weeks about the goings on of this miserable fucking planet and it’s making me miserable. and being told information i already know about some stupid law i vented about one night doesnt really make me feel much better about it, this law still looks depressing to me, it all does. i dont want a debate even if this is worded like the beginning of one, i only replied because i cant help myself sometimes and i probably shouldnt have been looking at my notifications seeing how bad i already feel.
I’ve always had a visceral dislike of what I call “normie theories of democracy.” We are told that democracy works because it provides checks and balances, allows for the peaceful transfer of power, and the correction of mistakes. It takes account of public opinion and gives citizens a say in how they are governed, thus creating some level of social peace.
I used to scoff at these theories. They seemed to be the product of social desirability bias. How convenient that intellectuals who believe in democracy find that it is the best system humans have ever designed.
always a wacky line but when I see things like this I wonder if these people view belief in like, a fundamentally different way
there’s a gap between those two paragraphs though, like I think that peaceful transfer of power is important, as is boosting the perceived legitimacy of government, taking input from public opinion etc. etc. however “the best system humans have ever designed” is a very casual way to sum that up!
there are many democratic societies and they can vary quite widely in the details, so it’s not one single system, and of course there is a big difference between the best system that humans have ever designed and the best system that humans will ever design, it’s not like our current arrangements represent some optimal peak of institutional design as I think everyone would agree.
yea, i thought about it more and it’s very easy to understand now—
—like you can compare a hypothetical benevolent dictatorship to a democracy and it’s unclear which should be favoured if the former was producing better outcomes and how much favouring the latter would be informed by ideological bias towards democracy regardless of practical outcomes
right, in order for a system to be better it has to produce better outcomes, unless you’re so committed to aesthetic or metaphysical principle that you will accept worse outcomes purely for the satisfaction of being punished by something you admire.
i’m a writer irl (can’t say who because my agent would put me into a blender and press go) and honestly the funniest and most humiliating incident of my life was the time my finished manuscript triggered a plagiarism flag with the publisher for two lines of prose in my literary fiction novel…
…. which was word for word similar to a paragraph in a certain explicit work on FFN starring elrond and his batsman from the hobbit films, aka that one elf that looked like he ate panic attacks for breakfast (i forget his name but it’s Figwit II) where the lord of imladris bends said twink over his writing desk and gives him the battering ram treatment.
and if you think i had to sit in front of one if the biggest publishing companies in the world and admit that it was, in fact, me who wrote the fic where the lord of imladris bends said twink over his writing desk and gives him the battering ram treatment in order to avoid being wrongly flagged for plagiarism, you would be absolutely correct.
(yes they published the book)
This takes a lot of courage in a lot of important ways good job OP
i’m a writer irl (can’t say who because my agent would put me into a blender and press go) and honestly the funniest and most humiliating incident of my life was the time my finished manuscript triggered a plagiarism flag with the publisher for two lines of prose in my literary fiction novel…
…. which was word for word similar to a paragraph in a certain explicit work on FFN starring elrond and his batsman from the hobbit films, aka that one elf that looked like he ate panic attacks for breakfast (i forget his name but it’s Figwit II) where the lord of imladris bends said twink over his writing desk and gives him the battering ram treatment.
and if you think i had to sit in front of one if the biggest publishing companies in the world and admit that it was, in fact, me who wrote the fic where the lord of imladris bends said twink over his writing desk and gives him the battering ram treatment in order to avoid being wrongly flagged for plagiarism, you would be absolutely correct.
(yes they published the book)
This takes a lot of courage in a lot of important ways good job OP
as a phrase, “she [x] on my [x] til’ i [x]” only is funny if on either side of a spectrum. either the phrase ends so specific to a sexual action it’s a smart joke (for example, “she strogan me off til i beef” uses the word “beef stroganoff’ but also makes a “stroking off” joke, making it clever wordplay.) or it makes so little sense that it ends up funny from the absurdity of deciphering what type of sexual action could even be taking place. (example: when my roomate the other night asked to hand them a sanpelligrino and then said “she san on my pelli til’ i grino” which begs the question of what ‘sanning’ is, what a ‘pelli’ repersents in terms of human genitalia and what ‘grinoing’ could possibly be.)
glimpse into my beautiful imaginary world where arthropods are really big and we domesticated them
edit: people are starting to say some “my worst nightmare” or “eeeww no that one is yucky and scary” comments on this like they do on any bug post and id like to say. it’s fine if you don’t like bugs it’s fine if you’re scared of bugs but don’t put that on MY post clearly talking about how much i like them and how cute i think they are. you can make your own damn post about how much you hate wasps or spiders or whatever. i’m blocking people who make these kinds of comments.
We met a really friendly cool lady from Argentina at our friend’s house and she asked us if we had seen “THE ANIMAL” from her country, then she showed us photos of a capybara and kept referring to it that way like it’s just The Generic Animal and that is SO true. She also told us all about the time a bunch of The Animals pissed off rich people, which I either overlooked or completely forgot about a couple years ago.
“That’s where the conflict started,” says Marcelo Canton, head of communications for the Nordelta Residents Association. The capybaras—known as “carpinchos” in Argentina—ate up lawns and massacred rose bushes. They caused traffic accidents, knocking delivery drivers from their bikes. Perhaps worst of all, for a country fiercely devoted to pets, the capybaras began to face off with dogs that confronted them on their new territory, causing injuries to both sides. “Dog owners were very upset,” Canton says. “Especially because here, the dogs are mostly French Bulldogs or other small dogs. They can’t defend themselves.”
In July, a group of residents went to the press, griping about a capybara “invasion” and calling for authorities to move the animals out to a nature reserve. The complaints triggered a huge backlash in both Argentine and international media. Viral posts on social media accused Nordeltans of hypocrisy, since their luxury neighborhood is built on the capybara’s historic wetland habitat, with some dubbing the animals “class warriors.” It didn’t help Nordelta’s case that capybaras are extremely cute, with goofy rectangular heads and narrow eyes that make them look permanently sleepy.“
All this time I’ve only seen memes about them being the most chill and friendly of all creatures but really The Animal will fuck up your lawn and then your little dog too :)
if people haven’t seen the memes i recommend them cause they are quite good
HOW DID A BABY TURTLE THE SIZE OF A QUARTER GET INTO OUR LIVING ROOM
absolutely harrowing. it came out from underneath the couch covered in dust. my partner nearly stepped on it, and picked it up thinking it was trash. it was a baby turtle. it stuck its little head out and it was the size of a toothpick. we frantically ran it across the road close to the creek because we don’t know how long it went without food or water under our fucking couch. HOW DID IT GET IN HERE. DID A SHREW GRAB IT FOR A SNACK OUTSIDE AND THEN ABANDON IT UNDER THE COUCH. WHAT HAPPENED.
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YOU’RE TELLING ME THESE THINGS CAN CLIMB??
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THIS GUY?? THIS GUY CAN CLIMB AND HIDE IN MY WALLS??? BABY TURTLE INFESTATION?????
what’s the pink they put in pink lemonade that makes it so poppin
that’s pussy babe!
Is there not a single stock photo of someone drinking pink lemonade that would have been easier than putting a pink cloud over a water bottle
you think i do this shit cause it easy
hi i’m not sure if you’re aware of this but that’s literally what it originated as? like that’s just what it is. hold on let me get the wikipedia page
the story i’ve heard is that it was invented by circuses sort of by accident. a lemonade vendor ran out of water, so they used the tub of water someone had washed their pink tights in. so, traditionally, pink lemonade is flavoured with pussy.
My office divvies up part of our caseload alphabetically, and one of our secretaries just sent me a new file that’s not in my part of the alphabet. Because I’m so very helpful I responded:
Moments later, the printer in my office fired up and spit out this piece of paper:
I’ve always disliked mr beast just based on his content mill vaguely exploitative vibes so it’s been kind of wild learning he also does legitimate crimes and workplace violations. it’s like disliking an acquaintance because they’re kinda annoying and then finding out they kill people too like damn dude you didn’t have to do all that i already hated your ass.
You’re not gonna believe this. The reason my PS5 controllers werent working. Is because there was dust in the charging port. So they weren’t charging properly. So I had to blow into them like an old NES cartridge
For a decade, a beekeeper near Athens, has kept a tradition: every spring, he slips icons of Christ, the Holy Virgin and different saints in his beehives, in order to bless his bees and his yearly honey production. And every year, the very same mysterious phenomenon occurs: bees make their honeycomb cells around the pious images, meticulously avoiding covering them.
what if the bees are actually refusing to touch the holy?
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