doidydoidy#auspol The committee: "Due to the short timeframe of this inquiry, the committee would appreciate submissions being limited to 1-2 pages."
The "Aligned Council of Australia":
I see the International Pay-To-Win Mobile Game Association would like to ensure that pay-to-win mobile games are not covered by the legislation.
#auspol
#auspol
"Young Labor Left NSW" doesn't sound like it would have a good take, but it's decent (the bill is bad and won't help). Also their letter head is just adorable.
AI group thinks the problem should be solved with AI instead.
There are consecutive submissions from Meeum and batyr, which is the most "bibme is now part of chegg" pair of names I've seen in quite a while.
Jokes aside (not for long), it's nice to see sensible submissions like "the kids in our sporting club really ought to be able to communicate with us and each other".
There's a submission from the "Social Media Research Institute", which sounded so fake I thought it might be the Pedestrian Council/Ausflag guy.
It turns out that, no, instead it's a "for-profit organization dedicated to understanding the impact of social media on mental and behavioral health". Oh.
Anyway, check out the team at https://www.smri.world/about-us/our-team-1 and ask yourself: do you think they checked how this long portrait-shaped photo would end up getting cropped on this page?
I got so distracted by the name I didn't even read SMRI's submission, but now I see that:
"Unified Social Media Personas can essentially be like LinkTree, but for social media profiles"
Anyway I want the committee to summon these people to come to the committee and demand they explain what the hell they think LinkTree is.
The submission from Headspace is notable for two reasons:
- It doesn't really address whether the bill is good or bad.
- The second page is sideways for some reason.
"Australian Business and Leadership School" says the bill should be implemented using digital phrenology (sorry, "AI-Based Age Estimation") and government-issued ID. (I think they genuinely haven't realized the whole point of the bill is to be a stalking horse for mandatory ID. If you think that's a good idea, you're not supposed to say that bit out loud.)
The ANU Law Reform and Social Justice submissions says the bill should be rejected, so I'm withdrawing my previous "abolish ANU" stance. Let's just abolish their Economics school and see how we go from there.
The CitizenGO submission seems OK at first glance. I only mention it because "Pokemon Go to the polls" will live rent-free in my head for all time.
Wait wait wait what the fuck? I thought the novelty had worn off and I was just closing the tab on the last one I had open, but...
This CitizenGO thing seems to be some international petition website, but the submission? Co-authored by George Christensen, yes *that* George Christensen, apparently.
Also the Australian bit of the site seems to be full of insane conspiracies about the WHO and the UN generally, and when it's not that it's transphobia.
So I'm amending my previous comment to "Pokemon Go fuck yourself George".
Speaking of people you do not have to hand it to, the Lyndon LaRouche folks oppose the bill too.
I am not a competent legislation reader, but it sure sounds like Google would very much like the privacy requirements to include a loophole the size of a planet. (The bill says "collected for the purpose of, or for purposes including the purpose of", and they really don't like that second part.)
Benjamin@doidydoidy That part of the bill from the beginning sounded like BS.
So you seriously expect Google and Meta to capture information that would allow them to build an age estimation profile (something they're already no doubt doing) and then delete it once they've completed the process of 'age assurance'?
Then they're somehow meant to also be held accountable that the process took place at the same time.
@BenjaminNelan I skimmed a bit further, what they're saying does basically amount to "we're already profiling the shit out of people, if you don't let us reuse that, we'll have to collect *even more* data, and you wouldn't want that, would you?".
If this wasn't a completely stupid idea, if they were even remotely serious about this being a problem that needed solving, the government could implement the age verification part themselves, and just generate a government-signed but anonymous "proof of age certificate" for you to provide to the social media provider. But then they would be undeniably accountable for the consequences, and they will never accept accountability for anything they could palm off to the private sector.
@doidydoidy And yeah, the government/Digital ID approach is one of the few ways I could see it maaaaybe working, if they do the id check and all the companies get is, as you said, a unique per-platform token that would verify that a person had completed the id check successfully.
Easier to implement in third party platforms, far less spread of platforms needing to engage in data collection.
But still a bit on the overbearing side.