California Lawmakers Say It’s Time To Regulate The Internet The Same Way China Does
from the elect-better-people dept
Here’s Part Two of my two parter about the Satanic Panic-level moral panic that has befallen the disconnected-from-reality California legislature (in a bipartisan way) as they seek to destroy the internet “to protect the children).
In my previous post, I covered the opening remarks by California Senator Nancy Skinner in support of her bill, SB 680, which is based off of her own complete nonsense misreading of an already sketchy study by an advocacy group. She made a bunch of blatantly false claims, such as that you could order fentanyl online faster than getting an Uber. Or that kids without interacting with social media algorithms saw eating disorder content every 39 seconds (the actual study showed that the fastest that any of their eight “sample” accounts saw any eating disorder content was after 8 minutes, and they were only testing TikTok). You can read the full analysis of why Skinner ought to retract her statement and pull the bill.
But, incredibly, the hearing went even further off the rails. There were two speakers who were given a chance to testify about the many problems with SB 680 (some of which I discussed in the first post). Leah Nitake from Technet and Jess Miers from Chamber of Progress. Both made clear, straightforward statements about how they (obviously) support the goal of better protecting children online (who doesn’t?), but highlighting the many problems of this bill, and how it will lead to harmful rather then helpful outcomes.
As Nitake noted:
SB680 prohibits any designs, features or algorithms that could cause a child user to take certain actions. But the bill is incredibly unclear about how that causation happens. One of the actions subject to liability is if a child develops an eating disorder. But it’s fair to ask, under this bill, would viewing a workout video be considered to trigger an eating disorder? Does cause mean that the platform is the only factor that caused the eating disorder, a contributing factor, a substantial factor? And would that apply to all child users, any child user or the average child user?
What about content related to recovering from an eating disorder that’s meant to be empowering but may actually be triggering for some child users?
These seem like pretty important questions. We’ll get to the lawmakers’ responses in a moment, but I’ll give you a bit of a spoiler: they don’t address them at all.
Miers was next up, and raised similar and related concerns:
The bill’s vague definition of addiction will leave platforms to make impossible decisions about what kids should see online. Given the bill’s liability provisions, platforms may choose to restrict access to California youth disproportionately impacting marginalized teens, including LGBTQ+ youth seeking support and teens in need of reproductive and sexual health information. Indeed, a recent Pew study found that the majority of teens consider social media a social lifeline.
SB680’s restrictions on designs, algorithms and features related to self-harm will inadvertently limit access to crucial self-help resources. This includes information on recognizing warning signs for suicide and algorithms that redirect at risk users to immediate help like the suicide hotline.
The bill similarly hampers platform’s ability to guide child users towards positive content when searching for information on disordered eating.
Lastly, SB680 will likely result in the removal of substance abuse resources from libraries, pharmacies, and other organizations. This includes information on identifying signs of drug use and obtaining lifesaving products like Narcan. Consequently, individuals may resort to unreliable sources, increasing the risks of associated with substance abuse.
Did the Assemblymembers presents address any of these issues? No, they did not.
Did the Assemblymembers ask either Miers or Nitake about these issues in order to look for ways to protect them. I don’t know Nitake, but Miers is an expert on this stuff, has worked in trust & safety before, and was before them, and ready to answer their questions on making sure the bill actually was protective of children, rather than harmful.
Instead, one by one, they made fools of themselves, and raised serious questions about the competence of the California legislature.
First up, Josh Lowenthal, son of two former California legislators, who seems to have the grandstanding nonsense moral panic performance art down pat:
I’m living this right now. As a dad of three adolescent girls, I’m in this and with respect to the opposition, the words I have for you are shame on you.
Shame on you? Shame on you? For pointing out that this terrible bill will harm children, not help them? Shame on you? For pointing out that the broad language of the bill will literally require companies to remove life-saving information, or to help guide people to useful resources around mental health and body image issues?
No, Assemblymember, Lowenthal, shame on you, for grandstanding in support of this dangerous nonsense.
For what it’s worth, Lowenthal then literally claims that all of the problems raised by Nitake and Meiers can be solved with AI, and he’s sure of that because he’s worked in tech.
I come from a career in tech. Some of the greatest minds we have in the state of California are in tech, and we do not have to put at risk these unintended consequences. The levels of sophistication that can be drawn in this artificial intelligence preclude the very things that you’re talking about, have complete and total faith in our tech community for doing the right thing and protecting our youth and measuring the right thing.
I mean, half of that is word salad, but he really seems to be arguing that if tech just could “nerd harder” a bit, they’d magically figure out how to stop bad stuff online, while keeping the good stuff. This is disconnected from reality, Q-Anon level nonsense. It’s not how any of this works.
And does Lowenthal really think that if Meta, Google, TikTok and others could wipe out harmful content with AI they wouldn’t have already done that?
His claim that he spent his career in tech made me wonder what his actual experience is. It looks like he spent years as an exec at FreeConferenceCall.com (which, amusingly, Techdirt used to use for our conference calls), and which initially existed as a kinda sketchy arbitrage play around local telephone exchanges. More recently he’s been at Plum, a company that helps MVNOs get set up, though it looks like T-Mobile just bought Plum at the same time it bought a few of the remaining MVNOs off the market.
Neither of these jobs would likely give him anywhere near the requisite knowledge on either AI or trust & safety challenges of handling dangerous content for kids. And it shows.
He goes on to complain that his own kids are questioning their self-worth and body image because of social media. Which raises the question of why he lets them use it. But, really, this is the same moral panic we’ve seen before. Remember, in 1878, it was Edison’s phonograph and aerophone that were (we were told by the NY Times) would lead to a “complete disorganization of society” where “men and women will flee from civilization.” Even worse, “business, marriage, and all social amusements will be thrown aside.”
There’s also some random nonsense from Lowenthal complaining about the kids these days and how they apparently don’t want to “become an astronaut” or “how to break ceilings that you may not know are in front of you.” And, I mean, sure. But silencing any controversial content on social media isn’t going to do anything about that.
Josh Lowenthal’s attempt to shame people for highlighting legitimate dangers of this bill that he supports, while suggesting that magic AI will make it all work is embarrassing for the state of California. Long Beach: next time elect someone who has a clue.
Incredibly, the next guy up, Assemblymember Bill Essayli, a lawyer and former Assistant US Attorney, is even worse. He asks the two speakers if they’d seen the Social Dilemma. As you’ll recall, our review of the Social Dilemma talks about how everything it accuses “big tech” of doing, it does itself. The movie is chock full of misinformation and Hollywood “dark patterns” to try to manipulate gullible people into believing false things. Apparently it worked on Essayli:
Question for the opposition. Have you guys seen the Social Dilemma on Netflix?
Have you? You haven’t seen it? Well, I highly encourage you to watch it because it’s very interesting when you watch what the experts in tech who built the systems talk about how they use the systems to manipulate human behavior and they rely on brain reward mechanisms like dopamine to attract and addict people to their platforms. And I think it’s been very, very successful. And you could see our kids today, they’re glued to their phones, they’re highly addicted.
I mean, the people in the Social Dilemma are hardly “experts.” The two most prominent voices are both selling stuff. One is selling fear, because he’s built an extraordinarily lucrative career out of scaring people about new technologies. Another, at the time the Social Dilemma was made, was literally running a company trying to sell software to help “protect” your kids from social media’s ills.
Think maybe they had a reason to play up the “evils” of the technology and the “power” of social media to give you dopamine hits? Maybe?
Well, Essayli has bought into it and says he hasn’t seen any benefits to social media:
So I haven’t seen a lot of benefits from kids being on social media to be honest. I think it’s been … on the balance, it’s been a lot more harmful. And so I do think it’s a public health issue. Whether this is the right solution, I don’t know. I plan to support it. I have a feeling you’ll gum it up in the court system. And so I just encourage that we as policy makers continue to really take this seriously and figure out a solution.
What you think, Assemblymember Essayli, and what reality (and lots and lots of research) show, are two very different things. Elsewhere, Essayli quotes the Surgeon General’s report, but it’s clear he didn’t read it. He perhaps, only read the one half sentence he read in his remarks. Because that same report actually details many of the benefits that Essayli insists he’s never seen.
Here, I’ll help you out, Assemblymember. This is from the Surgeon General’s report you pretended to read:
Social media can provide benefits for some youth by providing positive community and connection with others who share identities, abilities, and interests. It can provide access to important information and create a space for self-expression. The ability to form and maintain friendships online and develop social connections are among the positive effects of social media use for youth. These relationships can afford opportunities to have positive interactions with more diverse peer groups than are available to them offline and can provide important social support to youth. The buffering effects against stress that online social support from peers may provide can be especially important for youth who are often marginalized, including racial, ethnic, and sexual and gender minorities.
For example, studies have shown that social media may support the mental health and well-being of lesbian, gay, bisexual, asexual, transgender, queer, intersex and other youths by enabling peer connection, identity development and management, and social support. Seven out of ten adolescent girls of color report encountering positive or identity-affirming content related to race across social media platforms. A majority of adolescents report that social media helps them feel more accepted (58%), like they have people who can support them through tough times (67%), like they have a place to show their creative side (71%), and more connected to what’s going on in their friends’ lives (80%). In addition, research suggests that social media-based and other digitally-based mental health interventions may also be helpful for some children and adolescents by promoting help-seeking behaviors and serving as a gateway to initiating mental health care.
But, no, we should ban all that (which this bill will do), because Essayli personally is unaware of any benefits, even though these are all detailed in the report he claimed to have read.
Elect better fucking people.
Essayli’s answer is to go the ridiculous, blatantly unconstitutional, Utah route.
My personal views, I’ve made it clear is that I don’t think kids should be on social media. I think Utah’s done that. Some other states are doing that. I think social media is more harmful than tobacco, so we should treat it the way we treat tobacco. You cannot … try to find a kid who can buy tobacco in California. It’s almost impossible. So we can stop kids from getting tobacco. I think we can stop them from getting on social media.
Did Chapman University School of Law, where you got your law degree, not teach you the difference between constitutionally protected speech… and tobacco? Because, shit, that’s embarrassing.
Tobacco is a product. Speech is speech. One of those is protected by the Constitution. One of those is not. You’d think that somewhere during the years you spent in law school, or as an actual attorney in the Justice Department maybe someone, somewhere, would have taught you that?
Believe it or not, it gets worse.
There’s first a brief statement from one person who admits that the language is probably too broad and “problematic,” but says she’ll support it anyway because “it’s a starting point.” Which is not how anyone should be making laws.
Then up is Assemblymember Ash Kalra. I’ve heard great things about Kalra in the past from some smart people, so his statements here were incredibly disappointing. He literally suggests that if China can regulate the internet, so can California.
And as someone that’s on many platforms, including TikTok, the reality is if you look at in China, they regulate TikTok heavily and only allow for educational content for young people. And yet here we just presume that we don’t have control over it and it’s just completely not true. We do have some degree of control, and to our colleagues’ point, because of a lack of federal action we can’t just sit on our hands, especially given the fact that there’s technology, much of it is being created here in our own backyard, in my district and near my district. And so I do think that we have an extra obligation to protect our youth and to ensure that these very valuable … otherwise very valuable social media companies and experiences that they can provide are done so in a way that creates the least amount of harm possible to our youth. So I want to thank the senator and would also like to be added on as a co-author.
Um, Assemblymember Kalra, I’m not going to tell you how to do your job, but I might humbly suggest that when you’re suggesting we literally take a regulatory page from China’s giant authoritarian internet censorship regime, colloquially known as the Great Firewall of China… you’re already losing.
China can regulate TikTok heavily because it’s an authoritarian country with no freedom of speech.
I would hope that an elected official in the US would understand that?
And, with that Senator Skinner closed out the hearing, again showing how completely and ridiculously out of touch and confused she is. She claims that the bill was “carefully constructed” which no one who has read it would possibly believe.
But she closes with the only attempt of any of the speakers to respond to the specific, delineated harms raised by Miers and Nitake. Except she does a terrible job of it.
And so I did not want to, as I think somebody said to somebody, throw the baby out with the bath water. I wanted really to get at those aspects of it that create harm. And so that’s really what we attempted to do. Now on the broadness, if this bill were a private right of action, then I can certainly see that point. But given that if the only ability to enforce it is through our public prosecutors, I think most of us know that prosecutors don’t tend to take things to court and act on something unless they have good evidence that it is violated more than just the spirit of that. So that’s another reason it was designed that way. And I would guess it will be put in court and we will see how all of that goes.
Senator, have you met local prosecutors or state AGs? They’re often political animals, with political ambitions, happy to take on crazy cases for the headlines. The idea that they’ll only take on cases with “good evidence” that “violated more than just the spirit of that,” is ludicrous and completely ahistorical. We know how this goes. We’ve seen how it goes. And it does not go well. I could point to dozens of cases brought by state AGs that had no chance of succeeding, but were brought to get headlines, especially ones around how those AGs (who are usually trying to next get elected governor or senator) are “protecting the children.”
But, really, any law where people point out how broad it is and your best answer is “well I’m sure no on will abuse it” followed by that you “guess it will be put in court and we will see how all of that goes” should be a law that is pulled from consideration, shredded, and then burned in a fire pit.
Laws are abused all the time. Including by local prosecutors. But this one is even worse, because of the nature of the bill, EVEN IF prosecutors don’t “go to court” the very nature of the bill, and the broadness of the language mean that sites will feel compelled, to avoid any risk of liability, to remove all sorts of content, including the content that Miers and Nitake detailed: content that is tremendously helpful for marginalized groups and those at risk.
It is stunning, if not surprising, and depressing, that this is how the California legislature functions today. That it would (1) push bills based on misrepresenting junk science then (2) shame people for pointing out the very real dangers of the bill while (3) suggesting we go further in emulating Chinese censorship and banning children (who have rights too, you know) entirely from social media, while insisting that nothing good has happened to kids because of social media (despite tons of evidence to the contrary — including in reports you pretend to have read), suggests that the entire California legislature is not fit for purpose.
Elect better people, California. What we have now is a joke.
Filed Under: addiction, ash kalra, bill essayli, california, jess meiers, josh lowenthal, leah nitake, moral panic, nancy skinner, protect the children, sb 680, social media, social media addiction
Comments on “California Lawmakers Say It’s Time To Regulate The Internet The Same Way China Does”
At this point, I see Pornographers and Strip Club Owners as more upstanding citizens than Politicians and Priests, as the former two just want to make a living and the latter two want to make the lives of children a living hell (one way or another).
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If anything, the “respectable” porno industry has better ethics than the Catholic Church—and that says more about the Catholic Church than it does about, say, Bangbros.
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Yes and no, but porn unions do exist, and they’re working wrt to keeping the industry “respectable”.
Your definition of “respectable” may vary according to country.
The argument everyone forgets...
The PROMISE of safety of children (or any other group) is not more important than the Rights of the whole.
The only thing that could potentially be as important would be the ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY of their safety.
Otherwise, our Rights are being traded for a hypothetical and we don’t get our Rights back if the hypothetical fails.
Re: Lovejoy's Law
Helen Lovejoy said “Think of the Children” quite often on an episode of the Simpsons. Moral Panics are apparently forever, as is that quote (as is the Simpsons’ run on TV).
in b4 Valis drops in to agree that the U.S. regulating the Internet like China would be a good thing for some reason
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Or Valis hypocritically condemning the US for this.
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MM – what do you think it says about you (and your minions) that you oppose child safeguarding?
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What does it say about you that you think Children should be allowed to listen to Heavy Metal and play Chess and Dungeons and Dragons?
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Let me introduce a bill that will sell all of the public land in California to China for $1, gives $50 billion to me, and also increases jail time for child abusers. It protects children, so you have to be in favor of it, don’t you? If you oppose that bill, you oppose child safeguarding – that’s essentially what you’re accusing Mike of right now… so when my bill comes up for a vote, I expect your support.
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What do you think it says about you that you think this bill will actually be effective at safeguarding children?
Nvm, I can answer that question on my own.
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“what do you think it says about you (and your minions) that you oppose child safeguarding?”
SB 680 is not about safeguarding.
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Jhon.
You’re the one backing authcap measures to oppress.
And you’re a fucking criminal, too.
And you would also shoot me for suggesting that choldren should play videogames, considering your past actions…
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i would not give my children over to idiots, thieves, Josef Stalin, or a cult, for safeguarding, but you do you.
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A few things. First, it says you can’t read.
Second, it says that you are in favor of performative nonsense that pretends to help children while actually harming them.
Third, it says that you prefer harming to kids to doing things right, to the point that you will lie and say people pointing out how this will harm children “oppose child safeguarding.”
Fourth, well, I won’t say it publicly. But, damn, it says a lot about the type of person you are.
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I’ve heard this think of the children bullshit forever, but never heard people saying “safeguarding” constantly until the British terfs started using the term to smear trans women.
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It’s all part of the Lizard People’s grand plot to depopulate the Earth of humans but now that you’ve discovered this they’re destined to failure. You have saved all of humanity!1!! Congratulations!!!!
Anybody else notice that the more authoritarian politicians become, the less connected with reality they are?
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I feel like you have that backwards.
Kind of related, but yesterday was the court hearing on a preliminary injunction on the Age Appropriate Design Code. We didn’t get an order and there was no indication that it would be coming immediately, but based on the one article I found that covered it, the judge did seem skeptical towards the state.
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That’s great news! Thanks for giving me a faint glimmer of hope!
Did you know that libraries contain content about murder, rape, eating disorders, self harm, lockpicking, and all sorts of bad stuff? Where’s the common sense library regulation to reign in Big Library and protect our youth from this dangerous content?
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Big Library heck! Let’s talk about Big Religion and their books chock full of adultery, rape, incest, murder, all that?
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Hell, the arguable main character of the Bible—or at least the most powerful character in that book—committed multiple genocides essentially because people didn’t love him enough. Is “love me or you’ll burn forever” really the kind of lesson we should be teaching children?
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Houston heard your complaints and is now busy converting over two dozen libraries into disciplinary centers for “problem” students. Sadly, that’s not a joke, I’m clarifying because I often post snarky things. Their governor is behind it and everybody in Houston is against it.
If this was happening elsewhere ...
Why do I feel like this would be getting a lot more (negative) coverage if it were happening in Florida?
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Too many assume california is the good guy because democrat majority when the democrats are just as guilty of trying to silence us as the republicans.
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“democrats are just as guilty of trying to silence us as the republicans.”
May be true, however it does not make them the same.
Some Republicans say they are finished with using words, they want to use guns to silence others.
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Some is an understatement, when the entire party protects child exploiters and insurrectionists.
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No, Josh Lowenthal, shame on you for letting your kids have unbridled access to the Internet. The rest of us are not your kids’ f*cking babysitter, and we won’t be punished for your lousy parenting. Maybe you should quit working, Josh, and stay home to parent your children.
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I’m pretty sure Desantis is working on a copy of Montana’s Tik Tok ban, but aimed at Disney Plus.
So much fun
Freedom isnt safety.
Who teaches your children SHOULD be yourself. YOUR learning and understanding.
YOU are supposed to know more then your child.
The first thing you child does is ask WHY, WHY, WHY.
then they make a sentence. and learn HOW to express what they wish to know.
Why not LEARN while THEY ARE.
Also Learn why you may be incorrect in your OWN thinking.
Re: now I know
What the hell happened to all our cartoons on TV.
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Easy. Voters aren’t the ones electing the miscreants, they’re just the window trappings of Constitutionally mandated elections. The aforementioned malefactors are put in office by money, which is spent only on bozos that can be controlled. IOW, the smart ones will tend to resist moneyed interests, and are therefore not backed by money…. and they lose elections, big time.
So ends today’s lesson in politics. There will be a test at the end of the week.
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Ok, but why do monied interests assist putting idiots in positions causing said monied interests to then be in jeopardy?
Monied interests have been above the law for too long and are tired of pretending?
Monied interests are ignorant?
idk
Re: quoted
a GOV. WITH ONLY 2 PARTIES, is Not a choice.
There are more sides to a problem then 2.
there are more choices to make then 2.
Its not easy to corrupt when you have to corrupt 2,3,4 groups, insted of 1,2.
We tried to kick lobbyist out, but that didnt last long, and SOME just changed the name and how they are defined.
We tried truth in adverts, That Died a quick hard death, Advertisers hated it and so did the Politicians.
We tried for Equal time in Political Commentary. They Just changed it and PAID, extra, for Adverts. the EXTRA, is so no one can match the price.
Next up:
The Lowenthal Control AI Bill.
The Essayli Do Something Before You Know Whether It’s Good or Possibly Really Harmful Despite Ignoring Exiting Evidence Bill.
The Kalra Dictatorship Envy Bill.
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How very consistent.
Not one mention in the article condemning the DNC, but we have one of Masnick’s Faithful telling us that the DNC is just fine the way it is, it’s the RNC that has to be eliminated, or something.
As though giving those criminals in the DNC complete control of the nation would actually improve things, when the opposite would be the case.
Go, DNC! Keep up doing your good work like this in California, make it the shining exemplar of DNC control leading to things getting better and better.
Oh, and better pick up the pace of condemning gun technology, can’t have the plebs and proles getting any ideas about having a right to use anything more advanced than muzzle-loading black powder weapons, the way the Founding Fathers intended things to stay for citizens, in perpetuity. It’s a DNC shtick, after all.
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I’ll take things I have never ever come close to saying or believing, for $1000 alex.
Go make up fantasies somewhere else, please. We’re busy enough over here.
Re: Re: As a Masnick Faithful ...
There are certainly a lot of people who give Democrats a free pass on their support of really bad legislation, even though their legislation is just as damaging.
Republicans:
“We hate LGBTQ people.” -> Support KOSA -> LGBTQ people lose valuable support info.
Democrats:
“We love LGBTQ people.” -> Support KOSA -> LGBTQ people lose valuable support info.
But … Mike Masnick, as well as the rest of Techdirt, is 100% willing to call out Democrats when they propose bad legislation. Good for Mike!
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Hey guys, I found a shambling zombie-strawman – should I bother to light it on fire?
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Like the Strawman in the Wizard of Oz, this Strawman (and the OP for that matter) has no brain.
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That’s an insult to the Strawman in the Wizard of Oz.
At least he had just enough self-awareness and humility to know that.
Nemo here is a Nazi jackboot.
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Better idea: Shoot out its knees and let it crawl in the muck forever.
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Didn’t the conservative side of SCOTUS say that the only permissible gun control was whatever existed in 1787 when the Constitution was written?
If gun control is to be locked to 1787, why shouldn’t gun technology be locked to 1787 as well?
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Don’t think of locking gun technology to 1787. Think of locking gun technology to that equaling the technology used by the Government. Any weapon of war used by the government of 1787 was purchasable and usable by any private citizen with enough money.
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That logic would conclude with it being ok for somebody to own a nuclear weapon because the government does.
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Own a musket for home defense, since that’s what the founding fathers intended. Four ruffians break into my house. “What the devil?” As I grab my powdered wig and Kentucky rifle. Blow a golf ball sized hole through the first man, he’s dead on the spot. Draw my pistol on the second man, miss him entirely because it’s smoothbore and nails the neighbors dog. I have to resort to the cannon mounted at the top of the stairs loaded with grape shot, “Tally ho lads” the grape shot shreds two men in the blast, the sound and extra shrapnel set off car alarms. Fix bayonet and charge the last terrified rapscallion. He Bleeds out waiting on the police to arrive since triangular bayonet wounds are impossible to stitch up. Just as the founding fathers intended.
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I rather think you’ve been playing too many video games. The legislature ought to ban them so vulnerable children like you can’t be manipulated into violence.
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I can’t believe people are so… unhumorous.
That’s a bloody 4chan copypasta wrt 2A.
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When it comes to the GDP, unemployment and income growth Democratic presidents have done immensely better than Republican presidents in the last century. Just like how the blue states subsidize red states when it comes to federal funds while the red staters pretend they’re pulling themselves up by their bootstraps while getting subsidies from blue states. Or how the murder rate is much higher in red states than it is in blue states. CA has less than 5 deaths per 100,000 residents while in Missouri they have over 22 deaths per 100,000 people. The Democrats may not be the best but they’re immensely better than the party that doesn’t believe in facts, respecting all the citizens of America (let alone all the citizens of the world) or does believe that violence is a legitimate solution to political issues.
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“As though giving those criminals in the DNC complete control of the nation would actually improve things, when the opposite would be the case.”
Who suggested the DNC should have this “complete control”?
What is this complete control you refer to? Is it like what conservatives have been jonesing for like for-evar?
Are you suggesting that things would be improved if the GOP were to have this complete control? Because there is ample evidence to the contrary. We have witnessed what happens, it is history and I doubt anyone actually wants to repeat it .. unless they are insane.
Social media is clearly harmful to legislators.
They should be banned from all social media until their brains have fully developed.
It’s for their own good.
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I’ll second that motion.
Re: That
Stopped in their 20’s with the beer bong parties.
'You know what the world needs? More dictators.'
When you’ve reached the point where you’re saying or siding with someone who’s saying, out loud and during a public hearing that what the internet really needs is more countries regulating it like China that’s probably a good time to pause and reflect on your life choices since something has clearly gone horribly wrong at some point.
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Q: Why does Donald keep a potato in his pants?
A: He wants to be a dick-tater.
Umm...
Ok
“how to break ceilings that you may not know are in front of you.”
A ceiling that is in front of you is called a “wall”.
“I’m living this right now. As a dad of three adolescent girls, I’m in this and with respect to the opposition, the words I have for you are shame on you.”
Allow me to offer a more accurate edit:
“I’m living this right now. As a father of three girls to whom I have happily given pocket sized personal gateways to all of the horrors humanity has to offer, I’m in this, and with feigned respect to those who oppose my grandstanding power grab, the words I have for you are shame on you for believing that as a parent, I should perhaps spend a moment or two looking into some content filtering or any of the monitoring software options. How dare any of you suggest that I should in some way be a parent and keep an eye on what my kids are up to.”
Shame on us, indeed.
"who doesn't?" me.
Speaking honestly, I genuinely think that “childhood innocence” is both a pernicious myth, AND an artifact of socioeconomic privilege.
Remember folks. The roman Catholic Church had an “index of prohibited books”- and decades of kiddie-diddling priests.
The best thing ANYONE could do would be to create a genuinely censorship-proof digital implementation – which would also be impossible to “regulate” (ie: censor)
The only good thing ab6thisx current cycle of pants-shitting hysteria is that it will res6in what ALWAYS happens: make-work for bureaucrats, which utterly fails to stop – or even meaningfully impact – the “problem” in question:
Good example: the “just say no” 1980s turned drug prohibition into a ridiculous joke to the point where cannabis edibles are widely available in much of the US despite being technically “illegal” federally.
Also: the pmrc “explicit language” sticker became a badge of honor\selling point.
BowdleriIng busy today bureaucrats blow.
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That would be Fido net, so long as encrypted connections are not blocked at the service level. The tools for that could be modified to work well with storage devices, and transport use the sneakernet. Micro SD card are easy to conceal, and a matchbox full is a lot of storage.
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As well as the prerequisite infrastructure and considerations for self-defense, encryption, and related matters.
Sooner or later, your info network WILL come into contact with the censors, and they have the state monopoly on violence.
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That is why I said the fall back is sneakernet, it is very hard to monitor what is going on when people are physically exchanging SD cards. The old USSR could not stop it working, and that was when it involved physical paper copies of books etc.
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While I’ll be forced to agree, I do have one thing to say.
Eventually, you will have to commit violence to defend your info network. Try parkouring when you have a ton of bullets in you. It’s gonna be hard. And the state has enough resources to flush your network down the drain.
remember this sentiment the next time the 2A comes up.
Mike,
Thanks for the informative take, as usual.
At one point you were commenting on a suggestion that the internet could be regulated just like tobacco. You wrote:
I hope you remember that sentiment when you or one of your writers call for obviously unconstitutional firearm restrictions. A favorite is to state that since we regulate automobiles, we should regulate firearms the same way.
Just like this bill wants to violate the first amendment “for the children” far too often are the calls to violate the second amendment “for the children”.
When the next tragedy is trotted out by one of your writers as a reason to regulate firearms, “for the children”, I hope you remind them of your simple statement:
thanks again.
Seeing as grandstanding causes serious damage to the fabric of society by causing children (including both the existing and soon to become adults) to become jaded and cynical, perhaps we should start by criminalising grandstanding and “lie-of-omission facts” punishable by fines and community payback per infraction.