This feels exactly like people fighting against gun control while schools are shot up on the regular. Get over your individualism and sparkling ideals and realize that something has to be done. If your privacy and personal freedom are tied to Facebook and Twitter, maybe that’s a you problem.

Why does every country on earth need to do it? Will a massive majority of the population switch to VPNs just to watch some YouTube videos? Is that any different from kids trying to circumvent other age gated activities? Does YouTube even want that VPN traffic if it makes them less money? Why not just ban smart phones for kids?

What measures do you need to enforce it beyond what already exists? The only ones that matter are massive mega-platforms. If a platform isn’t complying just punish it.

The main question is how much of your life really needs to exist in a digital space? People paid bills, shopped, watched porn, played games and read news before the internet. Democracy falls when an entire generation of voters is raised on supporting Tate-endorsed fascism. This is not a non-issue. It’s happening no matter how much you tut-tut everyone’s parenting.

The solution is to give those laws teeth. Harsh regulations on platforms that serve unmoderated content open to everyone. Enforce transparency on content serving algorithms. Massive penalties for security breaches. Ban platforms that don’t comply.

If you’re worried about state actors having access to your clearnet data, that’s pretty much unavoidable in the internet age. You can lessen that by pushing against the digitization of society. You shouldn’t need a smart phone or internet service to live daily life.

Support brick-and-mortar stores, your local library, a local hobby group. Campaign against always-online car features, IoT e-waste, traffic surveillance laws, etc… Don’t make me choose between subjecting children to a stream of unregulated bullshit and the right to privacy. It’s a false dichotomy propped up by our need for digital convenience.

It’s not social medias fault. This is POOR PARENTING. Plain and simple.

Sounds like absolving social media to me.

The complexity of social media engineering and the scope of its impact is unprecedented. It’s not at all the same thing as video game or TV panic. When you account for how much real-life peer discussion is driven by these platforms, protecting your child from this toxic rhetoric is nearly impossible.

You used to have to show your ID to rent a movie in person, why is doing it online any different? If you (rightfully) are concerned about data collection and surveillance, push for legeslative protections on that topic. This is a completely separate issue with a very clear root cause.

If you believe there should be no accountability or oversight for the richest companies ever that have deep personal access to billions of people across the globe, you should wake to the realities of the 21st century.

I would argue that those factors aren’t a direct cause, but the isolation leaves them vulnerable to things like this. The internet used to be wide open and your semi-random traversal of independent sites would still expose you to a diverse array of people and content.

The pursuit of profit led to massive, accessible, engagement driven social media platforms. Optimization for ad views meant segmenting demographics and serving them distilled content. The hyper specific content led to these demographics living in echo chambers based on their flavor of polarizing content.

The Tate-sphere is built around exploiting that isolation and selling bogus solutions. There’s no specific reason the algorithm funnels into it other than it’s catches a broad user base on a charged topic => $$$. The algorithm could just as easily push young men into fighting for socially beneficial causes, but anger is a strong emotion that gives the most money.

So over a few years millions of parents decided to collectively take a hard pivot into bad parenting? Couldn’t possibly be an unprecedented media environment with algorithmic targeting?

I think soft power only goes do far once you start achieving your goals. Propaganda got Trump elected twice, but now that the rest of the world sees him driving America off the cliff to toe Putin’s line other countries are being hardened.

Its kind of like an immune response: look at the whiplash in conservative polling numbers in Canada or the mounting regulation/push back on captured social media platforms.

9/11 was a fantastic success for fascists, there’s never been so much sweeping support for surveillance and racism. No reason to stop killing the geese that bleed the golden paste…

I don’t disagree that there’s a lot riding on that house of cards, but as you pointed out the stakeholders in keeping that up are nearly every global state. Do the Houthis really hold any cards when they’re under that microscope?

I imagine attacking a target that could literally collapse the world economy would be slightly harder than flying drones at a very expensive boat.

Edit: The petrodollar is all but phased out by Saudi Arabia. I don’t think that current US financial interests are anywhere near as coupled to those oil fields (compared to just a few years ago).

I thought the concept of lebensraum was violently debunked nearly 80 years ago but apparently some people didn’t get the memo. Sounds like most of you skipped the lesson on how appeasement turns out too.

Sovereign state #1 ⚔️

Sovereign state #2 🛡

Its pretty morally clear cut when you use your own brain to think about it.

Yes, a lot of different states get involved in an international conflicts. Its not pretty or squeaky clean, that’s how war works. If you didn’t want that then you should have opposed the decades of aggression from Putin’s Russia, it’s a bit late to get your hackles up now.

But you do you man, you can whatabout and bothsides all the way to the firing squad. I’ll be rooting for your gold medal in the mental gymnastics event.

One of these two actors is actively and aggressively siezing strategic territory needed for a sound position in a changing climate. I’ll give you a hint: neither of them give a shit about living in Russia.

I hope to see this same victim blaming enthusiasm when America invades Canada and Greenland for the same reasons.

America nuked Japan twice and they ended up pretty good friends. If Russia could, they would. They don’t want to get pants’ed on the world stage.

You want to make a lifelong enemy? Renege on 20 peace deals since 2014.