this post was submitted on 29 Nov 2025
64 points (97.1% liked)

Legal News

619 readers
199 users here now

International and local legal news.


Basic rules

1. English onlyTitle and associated content has to be in English.
2. Sensitive topics need NSFW flagSome cases involve sensitive topics. Use common sense and if you think that the content might trigger someone, post it under NSFW flag.
3. Instance rules applyAll lemmy.zip instance rules listed in the sidebar will be enforced.


Icon attribution | Banner attribution


If someone is interested in moderating this community, message @brikox@lemmy.zip.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

High Court challenge says law imposing ban is ‘grossly excessive’ and infringes on ‘constitutional right of freedom of political communication’

top 12 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] cyrano@piefed.social 8 points 11 hours ago

Reality is social media companies are publishing companies and need to held to the same standards as publishers.

[–] Zier@fedia.io 28 points 15 hours ago

Taking away their freedoms is the wrong approach. They need to go after the social media companies for not protecting users from harm, regardless of age. The platform needs to be the start of regulation, not the citizen.

[–] shads@lemy.lol 19 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

If this law had even a tiny bit to do with protecting children they might start considering all the perverse incentives and counterintuitive outcomes. But since it is just a surveillance measure that they are couching in "won't somebody think of the children" they do not give a fuck.

The real players pushing this are unelected members of the intelligence community who are entirely insulated from accountability so they are going to push until they get their way no matter what it costs the country or how many politicians it costs their positions and/or souls.

[–] GottaHaveFaith@fedia.io 2 points 11 hours ago (2 children)

How is a social media ban a surveillance measure? It literally makes it much harder to monitor what people do

[–] shads@lemy.lol 5 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

So the government mandating ID checks on the must popular websites makes it harder to monitor people? You're going to have to explain that one to me.

Imagine if you couldn't enter certain public spaces without providing ID, because otherwise unsupervised kids might get in there, then imagine the records of who had been in that places was stored in some random spot online with only loose platitudes that the government expects companies to try really hard not to leak that data. Would you then feel that this was a safe place?

Also because the kids are smarter and more motivated than the government gives them credit, they start using work arounds to access that place, so the main way to get penalised and potentially have your identity stolen is to engage with this pointless and flawed system in good faith.

This is a debacle on an epic scale, they could instead be putting in place some real legal consequences for companies that facilitate or engage in abuse. We know for example that Facebook has experimented on manipulating algorithmic results of teenaged girls to make them better consumers by heightening body image issues. Round up the Australian Meta executive team and throw then in jail for a decade or two when that sort of shit comes out. When a data leak takes place extradite the CEO and give him a day of jail for every user that was put in jeopardy, it'll only take a couple of CEOs sing jailed for multiple centuries before data security becomes a top focus in every company.

No instead let's institute a poorly thought out ban on a non voting block, to disguise the first steps in establishing the framework of the actual surveillance state we are working up to.

[–] GottaHaveFaith@fedia.io 2 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

You mean those social networks full of your pictures, coupled with your profile info such as name and maybe date of birth? Sure bud

[–] shads@lemy.lol 3 points 6 hours ago

Yeah I mean the one good thing we can agree on about social media is that it's a perfect record, no one lies and all the information uploaded to it is so truthful that you can basically treat it as a complete record. Imagine, if the opposite were true, people could engage with social media without having to provide any information they didn't want to. Not even going to get in to the pros and cons of this. But it all comes down to penalising those who engage in good faith. Don't forget, we have a wildly impractical law om the book that allows our government to compel any citizen who works for one of these large companies to install back doors into the system with a potential stay at a Federal prison for any objection or disclosure. The groundwork has been getting laid for a long time on this project.

[–] yistdaj@pawb.social 1 points 11 hours ago

It bans only certain people by age. Now how do you figure out their age? Photos, ID both work, but simply asking for age is not considered enough by the government.

[–] schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 12 points 15 hours ago

👏👏👏👍

It is probably not going to succeed; young people are approximately the only minority whose rights can be restricted completely arbitrarily and which tends to have fewer, not more, rights over time. But still a good thing to try and I wish them the greatest success.

[–] paraphrand@lemmy.world 3 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago)

Is there a right to communication medium?

Just to be absurdly weird: Spent shell casings with writing on them seem fair to ban. Maybe? I dunno. (I’m just being cheeky)

This also reminds me of “freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach.”

[–] CameronDev@programming.dev 4 points 16 hours ago

Good on them. Wish there was more details on how to support them.

[–] Cypher@lemmy.world -3 points 15 hours ago

I hope this fails, social media has had horrible outcomes for young people.