this post was submitted on 27 Nov 2024
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19
Parliament delivers a performance piece of legislative 'enshittification' that raises more questions than answers (www.abc.net.au)
submitted 22 hours ago by Gorgritch_umie_killa@aussie.zone to c/australia@aussie.zone
22 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Annabel Crabb's analysis of parliamentary goings on this week.

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[–] Lodespawn@aussie.zone 9 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago) (2 children)

I'm glad they have put the onus of social media platforms, however I think there is no feasible way to make this work short of requiring 100 points of ID be provided to your social media account to prove age. As much as I'd like to share that information with every platform I think I'll pass.

Further to this, how do you police that on something like the fediverse? Is @Aussie.zone going to shut down because the onus of checking IDs too much for a small social media provider? What about IRC?

I assume there is going to be a series of marches consisting of a million angry children and their parents protesting the loss of Minecraft and Roblox ..

[–] Gorgritch_umie_killa@aussie.zone 5 points 17 hours ago (2 children)

Further to this, how do you police that on something like the fediverse? Is @Aussie.zone going to shut down because the onus of checking IDs too much for a small social media provider?

I'm worried about this. I see no protections other than the minister's discretion for small social media being liable for civil penalties of $9million. Thats the kind of money that freezes the social media market in place, allowing only the very largest to be involved.

This is of course if the fediverse admins are unable to implement reasonable steps for age verification.

I'm not technical, so i'll be interested to know peoples thoughts on the implementation, and maintenance of age verification?

[–] quokka1@mastodon.au 4 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

@Gorgritch_umie_killa @Lodespawn Doesn't sound too big a technological challenge (think along the lines of when you sign into a website using Google or Facebook as your ID provider). But puts more hassle on site admins. And, more importantly, how are users going to know if a site is actually doing authentication or just gathering their ID data? Then there's the question of what sites they will try and include in the ban. Meta etc is a given, but Lucy's Australian Knitting forum? iMessage? Signal? Mastodon instances?
Then there's the concern that all of a sudden Govt have a link between all of our online nicknames etc and our actual names. That's a massive issue in my eyes and they'll need to clarify if that's going to happen.
In the end my son could, and probably will, just rent a private server in Singapore for a couple of dollars a month and VPN through that. I expect he'll set his mates up on it too. So instead of some kind of visibility of what he's doing on the home network, I'll have none.
And we'll be paying handsomely for this whole exercise.
I, like a lot of parents I'm sure, am actually in favour of not letting kids into those places. But I can't, yet, see how it can be done.

[–] Lodespawn@aussie.zone 2 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

The definition of a site that would be affected is in the online safety act. Your son's singaporean Minecraft server would definitely be included and if he had a beef with one of his friends they could report him and he could be fined 30,000 penalty units or $3,300,000.

[–] Lodespawn@aussie.zone 3 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

He could however get around it if he charged his friends $0.0001 per Mb of data transferred between them and the server (business interactions) or made sure that every chat post included an ad and all polygons were skinned in ads (see section 63C(1) and 63C(3) of the act amendment)

[–] quokka1@mastodon.au 4 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

@Lodespawn tbh, i suspect they will all just open a shared Google Doc and chat in that.

[–] Lodespawn@aussie.zone 2 points 16 hours ago

That is excellent

[–] quokka1@mastodon.au 2 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

@Lodespawn I had a read of that definition in its current form and it's ridiculously broad.
For Singapore I meant a VPN server hosted there. So he could connect to that and then off to mydangerousbombmakingforum.com without Albo checking he's 16.

[–] Lodespawn@aussie.zone 1 points 16 hours ago

Oh yeah sorry I see that now

[–] Lodespawn@aussie.zone 1 points 17 hours ago

The way I see it it would be a struggle for big social media sites to implement. I think they are more likely to shimmy on out of here.

[–] Lodespawn@aussie.zone 1 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago) (1 children)

The legislation seems to exclude everything for business purposes, if a child is selling skins on Roblox are they then entitled to an account?

It also excludes advertising, if all a user's interactions are being sold by the provider to advertisers and that being their primary business model, does that mean the account is off the hook?

On another note I love the definition for 'material' in the existing act .. shows a rock solid understanding of the internet.

[–] Gorgritch_umie_killa@aussie.zone 1 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Can't see where they state the definition for 'material', what does it say?

[–] Lodespawn@aussie.zone 2 points 17 hours ago (2 children)

Hahaha it's in the original act and it's hilarious.

material means material:
(a) whether in the form of text; or
(b) whether in the form of data; or
(c) whether in the form of speech, music or other sounds; or
(d) whether in the form of visual images (moving or otherwise); or
(e) whether in any other form; or
(f) whether in any combination of forms.

[–] Gorgritch_umie_killa@aussie.zone 1 points 13 hours ago

Pretty impregnable net the legislative writers have cast there.

[–] eureka@aussie.zone 6 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago) (2 children)

Ah great, the word 'enshittification' is already going to shit.

[–] quokka1@mastodon.au 1 points 18 hours ago

@eureka @Gorgritch_umie_killa If it helps, CoPilot reckons

"still thinking of a playful use of an alternative word
Got it! Here are a few playful alternatives to "enshittification" that convey a similar idea:

Crapification: The process by which something becomes crappy.

Bummification: When things start to become a real bummer.

Suckification: The act of something starting to suck.

Trashification: Transforming into trash-quality.

Downslopification: Going down the slope of quality.

Flopification: The journey from success to flop.

Funkification: Things taking a turn for the worse in a funky way.

These options keep the humorous and playful tone while conveying the decline or deterioration of something. Do any of these fit the bill for what you had in mind? 😊

"

[–] quokka1@mastodon.au 1 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

@eureka @Gorgritch_umie_killa suggestions for a new one?

[–] Gorgritch_umie_killa@aussie.zone 3 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Meh, never liked the term.

I never felt it captured the seriousness of the undermining of the public's access to reliable information, by the ownership of these public sphere's being captured by profit maximising entities.

The temptation to skew algorithms to profit maximisation instead of best information delivery has proven too great, its why a fundamental shift away from the walled garden concept is required. In my view.

[–] zero_gravitas@aussie.zone 2 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

'Platform decay' is more serious and more descriptive to boot.

[–] Gorgritch_umie_killa@aussie.zone 4 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Certainly is better. But i don't think it needs a 'technology industry' specific term.

Old terms like market monopolisation, or corruption of the public sphere.

Or something like those are better, because nothing the tech platforms have done is new, their tactics aren't different from any other company seeking to dominate their respective product market. The key difference being the speed at which their product travels around the world.

[–] zero_gravitas@aussie.zone 3 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

You make a reasonable point. I think there is difference, though, which is the degree to which 'the customer is the product' for these platforms, and that's a key ingredient in Doctorow's original post:

Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.

Sure, advertising is nothing new, but the degree to which these platforms can target content and ads to the individual is qualitatively different to 'old media'. Emphasis on 'the customer', singular, being the product, not 'the readers/viewers' as a whole.