It's way easier for lazy politicians to enact laws to outlaw, censor, and surveil under the guise of a moral panic than to enforce antitrust regulations and interoperability and algorithmic transparency mandates...

"While social media bans may seem like a prudent measure to protect children, they are not only ineffective, they endanger both children and adults. There is little evidence that social media is driving any type of widespread mental health crisis in children. Studies have repeatedly shown the opposite. Removing anonymity from the web, which will inevitably happen when tech companies are required to identify and ban children, allows for easier government tracking and censorship of journalists, activists and whistleblowers, who rely on online anonymity.

And while some claim the laws would curb big tech’s power, only the largest tech companies have the resources to shoulder the extensive costs of age verification systems. Non-profit and indie platforms could be forced to close, consolidating big tech’s power further. Mass surveillance systems, once constructed, could also be easily leveraged by governments and bad actors.

If we want to fix the problems with social media, the place to start is through comprehensive data-privacy reform and consumer protections. Governments could also take action to break up big tech companies and prosecute them for anti-competitive behaviour. Lawmakers, who claim to care about children, could pass broader social and economic policies that we know would meaningfully improve children’s lives. Social media is a lifeline, especially for marginalised youth such as LGBTQ+ teens. Any policies that limit online access should centre on the most vulnerable children and adults.

To enact the social media bans being proposed around the world requires some system of age verification, which inherently means expanding surveillance technology."

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/mar/02/ban-children-social-media-biometic-data-surveilled

#AgeVerification #SocialMedia #Politics #Censorship #Surveillance

Call to action to cis people: be assholes anytime you get asked for your sex assigned at birth. Write letters, complain to staff, refuse to answer. Make it impossible to collect sex assigned at birth. Be really offended that anyone would ask you. Make enough noise that if trans people want to quietly not answer or give whatever answer feels correct to them, no one will notice.

#Boost #CallToAction

To read the news while rereading @cstross’s The Labyrinth Index (plot: U.S. gov’t captured by shadowy security-agency cultists to make Cthulhu great again) is like a bad trip.

“[A commander] said [to tell the troops] that ‘President Trump has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth,’” the NCO continued. “He had a big grin on his face when he said all of this which made his message seem even more crazy.”

https://newrepublic.com/post/207270/military-leaders-iran-war-donald-trump-jesus-armageddon

#KashPatel gutted #FBI counterintelligence team tasked with tracking Iranian threats days before US strikes. He fired a dozen agents and staff members from a counterintelligence unit tasked with monitoring threats from #Iran.

They were ousted for a simple reason: Each was involved in the investigation of President trump’s retention of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/03/politics/patel-fbi-national-security-division-firings-iran