"Protect the children" is the new "fight terror". Big empty phrases that only end up taking away rights and targeting minorities.
this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2023
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True, but not new. It's been this since before "fight terror" in fact.
It's coined as the "Helen Lovejoy Syndrome" after a Simpson's episode from the nineties.
Won't somebody please think of the children?
Yes, true. I guess its more of a shitty comeback, worse than before.
Always has been.
Mighty convenient how so many of these "protect the children" groups end up with kiddie diddlers on staff.
https://news.yahoo.com/alabama-anti-abortion-advocate-charged-190424945.html
Possibly even worse since it's very often used as a cover for CSA. Not just minorities in this case that are being harmed, we're talking about literal children. It's fucking horrific.
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"Fight terror" has only really be an excuse since 9/11. Before they had others including protecting children. Only the anti-trans stuff is newish.
protect children online
I've yet to see any single new law proposal, that actually tackles this problem rather than misusing it's emotional trigger to get acceptance for surveillance and control
Meanwhile... child labor protections? Who needs em? Protections against child marriage (or let's call it what it is, rape)? They'll be fine. God wills it, after all, and it's in the Bible (or so they're told, very few of them actually read it).
Meanwhile, actual abuse is happening constantly in the Catholic (and others) church, and what do they do? Just shuffle 'em around a little bit. They "repented", so that means we can leave him alone with kids in Montana now instead of New Mexico. Problem solved! Thank the lord!
These fuckers have zero interest in actually protecting children, and for a good chunk of them, they're actively working toward the exact opposite.
Why is there always an authoritarian law being proposed every month?
Because we've hit the point of capitalism where the system is imploding on itself, and so those in power turn to fascism in order to protect their capital.
Rights for everyone when there's a boom, cracking down on rights when the cake stops growing.
we've hit the point of capitalism where...
Oh, you mean its literal inception? This shit never worked.
That's kinda historically illiterate. The reason people tolerated Capitalism in the first place was that it smashed old forms of oppression and replaced them with less bad forms of oppression.
Being marginally better than feudalism isn't a very high bar.
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Because someone has to care about the children.Don't you care about the children? The chidlren. CHILDREN!
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Because some folks really seem to like power? And emotion is a solid button to press because a lot of folks are irrational monkeys.
Edit: most - > a lot of
I like the phrase "Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely".
KOSA is not the only thing one should be worried about, illiterates from UK are bringing in an Online Safety Bill which needs all services with encryption to provide a backdoor for the UK government under the reasoning of "monitoring for CSAM content".
This doesn't just impact UK citizens, but will do for the world.
If I recall correctly, Australia did something similar.
Interesting to see how the 5-eyes try to push similar dumb ideas together.
Australia did something recently, yes. It's called the AA Bill. And it allows for the government to demand a worker put a backdoor in to an encryption product. The absolutely stupid thing is that if the government does this, the worker can't tell a soul about it for fear of prison. If (when) it comes up in code review, they're still not allowed to tell anyone. If they do, it's straight off to prison. Where does it stop. I was hopeful that tech companies would abandon australia when this happened, but they didn't. They just rolled over and took it up the arse pipe. Fucking hell. This is a good write up
That's not even mentioning what google is trying to do currently.
What in the name of fuck is that bill. That's one of the worst pieces of legislation I've seen in a longer while. Companies and open source communities will immediately catch that an employee is trying to sabotage their system on behalf of the government by means of code review and version control history. The programmer will be questioned, then likely fired or ostracized in case of open source works and the code will hit the bin. This idiotic... thing will accomplish nothing but harm their own citizens who will now be treated like potential therats and denied employment opportunities.
On a funnier note, every time Australia introduces some horrible tech-related bill I remember this beautiful clip summarising just how well politicians understand technology.
‘murica gets worse
WHY ARE "THE CHILDREN" ONLINE?????!!!!! Where are their fucking parents?
Overworked, underpaid, and relying on technology to distract the kids. Not a lot different from 80's and 90's parents, except you know, poorer and more time-strapped.
Same here, overworked and underpaid, two kids. Neither has a smartphone nor has access to any social media site beside kids YouTube and Netflix. I meant kids shouldn't be on social media, in my original comment. I always utilize the iPad for my daughter when I'm working or need her to sit so I can get shit done. My son, who's the oldest, doesn't have a phone yet. He has two gaming consoles, neither of them has online access for multiplayer. That's what I mean by why are kids on the internet.
Not trying to dog on other parents, but just like when I was growing up a lot of parents either didn't know/didn't care what their kids were watching on TV, and didn't make a lot of effort to control it. Many parents now are sadly similar in not paying attention to their kids' internet habits.
You're being a good parent. I don't know why other people struggle with this idea. In my opinion, you should just be proud of yourself and disappointed in other parents who don't take the same measures.
I will say those other parents make it difficult, though. My sister had to drop a lot of her parental controls eventually because her kids would go to friends' houses with unrestricted internet access, and you just can't control that. Even if you are involved with what your kids watch at home, once they are out of your eyesight and with other people, they can get access. Anyway, denying them access was causing more fights between her and her kids than it was worth. They saw that other kids had unrestricted access, and they wanted that, too. On the plus side, they were already 14 by this time, but still, it became a huge headache because other parents didn't care.
Anyway once again, good on you, mate. Keep being a thoughtful and involved parent, we need more of y'all.
Thank you. The key thing is that I didn't make it "I'm your parent and I control your life", no, I reasoned with him and explained to him whatever we do. I have built a very good friendship with my son that he trusts me when I do something for him. I'll never make him feel that I control his life or what he does on the PC, I've just made him aware of things. Not gonna lie, though, we do have one strict rule, no social media of any kind. Also, I'm too lazy to type all of this again, but here is my response to another commenter when they asked if my kid has a social life in real life (basically, they were worried that I'm caging my kids lol).
No, I have them both locked up in a cage in the middle of the Pacific ocean 😂 My friend, there is a whole world out there beside this virtual one (internet). My son goes outside all the time to play with his friends IN PERSON. Rides his bike with them, does sleep overs and whatever we did back in the day when we were kids. He just doesn't have any social media accounts. I have a full Linux PC sitting in his bedroom that he can do whatever he wants on. I just make sure he's safe on there. I have a firewall on there and an ad blocker on the browser. My daughter is special needs, so, that's another story :)
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I was online as a child. It's normal. Get used to it. Quit trying to break the Internet over it. Kids aren't delicate little flowers. No one's head exploded over seeing Lenna's nipple. (Not their big head, anyway…)
I was, too, but agree with me or disagree, the intern back then wasn't as bad as it is right now.
Maybe so, but that's not because of the availability of porn, gore, or shady characters to chat with, all of which were already plentiful in the '90s. It's because of things like money-sucking video games targeted at kids, and unless I'm mistaken, KOSA does exactly diddly squat about it.
These bills are going to keep coming. The goal is erosion of rights and privacy at all costs.
My entire life, they have never, ever once stopped trying to push the same bullshit through, over and over and over.
It's so goddamn exhausting. A constant battle of attrition.
I'm just tired.... When do I get to just enjoy my life?
When the populace collectively grows a brain and replaces these clowns with someone honest. People voted for these legislators, keep in mind.
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People need to take more responsibility for their kids - if you let them online, you'd better fucking understand what that entails and if not (gasp!) don't let them on the internet.
And if that's impossible for someone then why the fuck did they reproduce in the first place?
Because reproduction is a lot easier than education
Because their god told them to reproduce and not question it.
Religion is a hell of a drug.
Same thing with banning books. This is fascist bullshit and it's not about protecting children or anyone else. It's about pushing their false Christianity, their christofascism on everyone whether they like it or not and trying to turn the country into a fascist "Christian" theocractic dictatorship where they can say and do whatever they want whenever they want about anything or anyone but no one else can.
I was with you til the "false" part. As someone who grew up in a sect that actually read the book, ain't nothing false about this Christianity or these Christians.
It's inconvenient to admit, but the bible is an awful awful book.
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Since it is "for the children", I'm sure they won't give a shit about censorship.
Prepare your VPNs. This will be one hell of a ride.
teach your kids about privacy online, later to use tor and I2p
Using Tor is considered terrorist activity in France
https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/336989
Why couldn't the US just do the same?
Internet freedom and privacy needs not only needs protection by technological tools like Tor or VPNs, but also needs legal protection. Would anyone use Tor if the government starts raiding houses? Tor users are such a small minority that the government can easily throw you all in prison.
I’ve known about Tor since like middle school but have been scared downloading it will get me on some watchlist. Or at the very least, tracked harder whenever I’m not on a Tor browser for whatever reason.
I live in the United States of America. Tor was developed by my own country’s naval research laboratory.
I've heard that most Tor nodes are controlled by the US government and the whole system is basically a honey pot, so why would they worry?
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