Tootfinder

Netflix tests Japan's entrenched baseball viewing habits, long dominated by domestic and free-to-air broadcasters, by locking up World Baseball Classic rights (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/20

I see no sign of any recognition from those who would want such a ban that they see any of the collateral damage a successful ban would have on the majority of kids who are not falling for this bullshit. That they are banning any good at all along with the bad.
Under 18s only
I see that the lobbying for these laws are funded by the absolute worst companies on the internet, those who will be entrenched by the legal compliance costs, that will cement themselves as the arbitrators of who is allowed to access the internet.
It’s a gift to Palantir and other surveillance companies. The very people running these algo-feeds are the ones who benefit from IDing every user and stalking them across the internet on their government-approved internet-licence IDs.
I don’t think even a successful ban on social media for kids would actually address the issue of kids being exposed to sexism and misogony or reduce the kids alienation and depression.
A ban can’t help, will make many things worse, won’t address the problem, and will make competing with the worst surveillance capitalists on the planet more difficult.
Going to war with every internet site and advice forum and making internet access harder won’t fix anything, and will have massive collateral damage against everyone seeking support from strangers or trying to learn things their parents won’t teach them.
But I see we are going to do it anyway.
The direction is clear.
Those companies do get what they lobby for, and they are lobbying hard for ID checks on every website, wrapping their desire to enclose the internet commons for themselves in a faux concern for children’s welfare.
And governments wish to monitor and control the internet, so they will pass these laws.
I wonder how many parents have a family group-chat that they’re going to accidentally ban their kids from using, not realizing that ‘social media’ might include Whatsapp? 😆
It won’t fix anything, it will make the situation for kids worse, impose costs and rents and hacks and exploits on all of us, and increase government and corporate power.
Many will lose access to their networks of support and help.
So it goes.
We will build a better more censorship resistant internet. It’s already here really: Briar. Matrix. Nostr. Bitchat. Veilid. Spritely. And the rest.
The laws may push us there faster.
The race will go on.

You think it’s a coincidence these laws are being proposed all over the world all at once?
Nope.
Giant companies run by surveillance capitalists are spending billions of dollars on lobbying governments all over the world.
See https://tboteproject.com/
The reasons for this lobbying are nefarious.
The bans will entrench existing companies ensuring no small company is able to compete. These massive entrenched companies will be able to afford the identity checking and compliance costs, tiny start ups not so much.
You can see why Facebook lobby so hard in favour of these laws. If their app WhatsApp is defined as the only group messenger allowed for kids by law, that is very nice for them.
Perhaps compliance is actually cheap and easy and small companies can afford it?
Certainly not if they are trying to compete in terms of privacy. They have to turn over their user ID data to a monopolist vetting company by law.
At best: we give the government the power to impose massive costs on any company they decided to add to a list of companies that count as social media. Impose costs and force them to hand over their user data to Palantir and the like.
Even if you trust the current lot of idiots in power to not abuse this whole-internet global tracking data, that is quite a totalitarian system to hand over to the really bad guys when they get elected next time.