(24 November 2024)

My final comment on bureaucrats behaving badly …. wasn’t going to mention but gosh ….

Am not in favor of Albanese and the Australian Government’s attempt to ban all people under sixteen from using “social media” – Albanese’s suggested ban is flawed in so many ways could type for hours.

In my opinion that is bureaucratic overreach at its worst. It is up to parents and families to decide how young people access “social media” not governments.

There are lots of easy to use ways adults can monitor children online and filters (firewalls) to prevent access to certain sites. It is easy to setup child-safe accounts on devices and monitor app installs etc

Why is the government deciding which websites teenagers can access – and which sites does Albanese mean by “social media” exactly – and why only those sites (thus potentially pushing children onto more extreme online chat rooms)

How is the government going to monitor and (criminalise?) children’s access to those sites. A parent showing their child youtube or tiktok videos is now a crime? Got to be kidding.

Fundamental lack of understanding by some bureaucrats as to what the internet is – of course governments cannot criminalize or ban people phoning each other in other countries and exchanging whatever words they choose to exchange and similarly it is fundamentally wrong to attempt to place government firewalls on people’s access to the internet.

Am of the opinion facebook should not be banned by governments but clearly sell-peoples’ data facebook is a badly monitored (and worse) rigged platform that requires regulation (there are a few posts about that on this blog)

Having typed that have long thought that the digital billboards see when driving past schools that announce “Find Us On Facebook” is very bad practice. In my opinion schools should certainly not be encouraging children to use facebook (a badly monitored sell people’s data platform with very real privacy and security risks) and that is something Albanese and the Australian government can rectify – ban facebook from schools yes – ban it from people’s homes is attempted bureaucratic overreach (we certainly don’t use badly monitored facebook to communicate there are much better and safer ways to communicate) Schools can use their own secure websites and secure portals to communicate with students and families and organize events etc

And it is important for parents, families and schools to teach teenagers how to be safe and responsible when online. Bought some early teen munchkins their first computer decades ago – they survived (some of them are now teachers ❤️)

There are lots of well managed great child friendly websites and apps – Youtube has a Kids only version etc