Sevrene's comments

It feels like now you're saying it's not because it's parliament's nature to be like this, but rather these other factors that occure within parliaments and other systems?

Can't you unelect the MPs? Doesn't the paper thin margins increase those odds? Honestly, it doesn't sound like the issue is a parliamentry system, but rather people either aren't aware of the issues (media), or have decided (wrongly or rightly) not to care. Either way I still don't get how that's the parliamentry nature as much as it's the people's. That's kind of the point of these systems.

I don't know enough about Candaian Punjabi dispora to comment about the other stuff.

>untouchable due to Canada's parliamentary nature.

This is an odd sentence to me, I assume there’s some reasoning under there that makes sense to the writer, but it doesn’t follow to me. It feels ‘just so’ to me, like there more to this than simply they can’t do anything because parliament.

Yeah you raise a good counterpoint, what you say is the other side of what I'm saying and totally valid. People can be manipulated, people need to put effort in to be virtuous- it's not always our default state. To not have a parent is to be responsible for yourself. It's better because you have responsibility and can decide for yourself, but it's worse because... well, you also have responsiblity.

My point isn't to blame the people for the fault of a few at the top, it's the give people the ability to recognise they have the power to prevent it. That does mean being more morally capable but it doesn't mean having all responsibility. So yeah we can talk about how social media owned by billionaires creates more extremism and harm, we can talk about how the commodification of politics reduces it to entertainment via perverse incentives. People aren't monoliths, no man an island, etc, etc. It's actually why I support this social media ban in the first place.

It's possible we just see things different, I'm not sure why you're so keen to say I'm "profoundly confused"- entirely possible we just have different perceptions no? Lets be more charitable.

I agree things have deteriorated, I agree the state is centralising it's power and becoming more authoritarian that's true. I agree that through democracy authoritarianism can rise, and does.

What I don't agree is that this by it's nature is because people value democracy, it's the opposite. Upholding democratic institutions might include a citizen doing their part to understand the policy, it might be the ICE agent or brownshirt, it might be judges refusing subverting traditions and spirit of law simply because it's not currently being enforced (much of democratic power is procedural and traditional, not by actual force). If people don't value it, it erodes and disappears.

> None of this is about ‘power in democratic institutions’ - they have plenty, which is why they are being turned into powering the authoritarianism

I think we might just both have a superficial disagreement with each other, when I say 'democratic institutions only have the power given to them' I mean to say the power of democracy is derived from the people, therefor if the state decides for the people (authoritarianism) and the people reject this but the state retains that power, well- that is treason not democracy. This is what made Hitler a dictator, he wasn't really into democracy, even though he subverted it, and he also used it to get into power. I'm not sure we actually disagree we might just have different framing. I consider this a failing of the people, yet you consider it a failing of the system (I assume). Both are valid I think.

To me, if people decide through democracy to elect a dictator that shows a reluctance of the population to care about democracy or institutional norms. That's why this stuff happens during broader social & economic downturns. If people want to elect a person who wants to spend the entire GDP on producing paperclips, well I can't really fault them- that is democracy, the only other choice is authoritarianism isn't it?

> ‘Why doesn’t anyone do anything?!?’ they say, as they refuse to do anything, or allow anyone sane to do anything either.

Yep, I agree with this. We do need to be smarter and work together. We do have freedom, including the freedom to harm ourselves. People need to respect that and be more responsible, be more virtuous. If not, we get the government we deserve but not the one we might need.

I don't really have an agenda but I have opinions I'm wanting to share & discuss– some of which I'm certainly wrong about. It doesn't feel to me as if you could honestly say the same.

You don't want to believe what I say, you don't think of me as trustworthy. Well I'm not, and you don't have to. You are welcome to your own opinion. That should put me above the likes of many, including infowars and those on sharing that video who believe they know and have a right to say everything. I'm not the one invoking political agitprop here, I would have rather discussed the topic of the submission.

I return to you "Have you not been paying attention?"

Trump didn't rise to power because of democracy, it was in spite of it, Trump literally tried to overturn the election results and still subverts the people's choice by continuing to spread that lie. He talks of jailing his opponents, plays dirty, doesn't respect the rules or democratic institutions. He is the antithesis of democracy and the people (using democracy) voted him in. The people failed themselves and their own people but they did so not as first order goals.

Spartacist uprising, mensheviks vs bolsheviks, etc- people didn't turn away from democracy because democracy itself failed them, they turned away from democracy because they had some idealist world they wanted to get to– by force (i.e not democratic). This is what motivated communist uprises and hitler's brownshirts to subvert the election. Note that this says nothing as to whether they are correct or not in their worldview. Hitler shares this type of thinking and he took advantage of it – just like Trump destroys the media "fake news" or makes voting harder, if we, the people, didn't allow it, we would prevent it one way or another. The problem with Trump or Hitler isn't that they're "too democratic", it's that they subverted the process debasing it in turn.

There is power in the collectve. Unions got this via bloodshed so that they need not bleed more. If we devalue unions because some unions are bad we just live in a world in which capital get to rule and bloodshed returns. It's a regression. It's not the right strategy, we need to work together despite our differences in solidarity despite the fact democracy sometimes leads to imperfect outcomes, all in order to prevent dictators, ensuring they govern with mandate and consent, not authoritarian force.

It's not one single institution like "Congress". Democracy isn't just voting it requires free and fair elections which require free and fair political discourse which requires transparency, and mass media that informs doesn't distorts, etc. If we don't value these the next step isn't voting on it democratically, it's violence to enforce totalitarianism. In some ways, we're already there. Lets not inadvertently enable it.

You've not understood what I said at all. I didn't ask for examples, I asked what you thought I was missing. Turns out I wasn't missing these things at all, we just disagree on the lessons learned there within. Fair enough, we can disagree, but to say I am denying it happened and not to do any different when my entire point was that we need to be MORE democratic, not less – by valuing democracy and not allowing people to tear it down, exactly what I am trying to do now.

Democratic institutions only have as much power as they're given.

It would be a lot clearer to everyone if you said what you think.

I don't think it's extreme to believe that democracy is the best tool to fight authoritarianism. That's why people like Trump deride democratic institutions and those important to it's function.

The idea that democracy either created hitler or wasn't able to stop his rise via democratic action at all is often spruiked in anarchist communist circles, while it's true hitler wasn't voted in the literal sense, neither is Australia's Prime Minister. That doesn't make the PM undemocratic, it's just its own democractic institution inside the party. There's actually nothing in the Australian consitution about PMs.

It doesn't mean you couldn't unelect the party democratically and thus the leader. The public can unelect them from power by voting out the Nazi party of which Hitler was leader (through again, a vote). So this is a case of what I'm saying actually being relevent – if people voted against the nazi party, hitler would not have risen to power. He only gained that power because the democratic institutions, the people let him. This is a case for more and better democracy, of valuing that institution. I've encountered Trump voters who were actually bernie bros and accelerationists - they voted for trump as a fu to the establishment. I think the have a moral responsibility to not vote on those urges and whims. I think this that's bad, even if I can feel the sentiment sometimes, and I think that sort of "democracy bad" is actually a harmful to discourse and simply not true.

We need to bolster democracy for the people, not call it toothless while invoking communism and fascism. I don't ultimately blame Trump for his rise to power, I blame the people for being fickle and perfectionists. Democracy is precarious and precious, not a perfect ultimate catch all. The people need to foster it otherwise the rising tide of populism and fascism will drown it.

Zionism is when healthy information choices? I don’t trust infowars, sorry but that’s served me quite well over the years.

I did look, you’re being obtuse again, after all how else would I know it’s from an infowars adjacent account.

You strike me as the type of person who thinks e-safety commissioner is CIA, they also call me a zionist for doubting that- it’s the goto ad hominem for people embroiled with I/P conflict.

This sort of social media bs and the way it affects political discourse is why social media is so damaging, much of it is just political propaganda.

Tell me what do you take from the clip?

Can you expand on this, what do you think I'm missing?

No sorry it wasn't a dig at you: the video was posted by someone who appears on Alex Jones' Infowars, talks jewish conspiracies. I just don't take that stuff seriously, doesn't make it wrong and if there's an argument you want to make I'll listen.

Small things I want to add or say:

- It's not young adults, it's 15 and under. Personally I would classify 17-20something as young adult (it's a bit subjective isn't it).

- The younger children don't really care about politics honestly. Curious if you have an age that you're ok with only ensuring irl politics for children? I think age to vote is a much bigger concern for me here in terms of civil liberties.

- Parents can still make that choice for their child (unclear how this will work to me yet, to be fair).

- I've become convinced no one really practises 'politics' online. People barely even debate anymore. They argue, they perform activism, they aggitate, its what gets attention (thanks to social media). I'm worried people think this is normal, it's not- political discourse used to be much more productive. I remember when fallacies were actually brought up logically on the internet and people actually cared about the accusation.

- I did explicit rp with adults as 7 year old on MSN chatrooms back in the day :')

They are different laws with different contexts but the type of rhetoric and logic used to justify them are very similar, right? I already agreed they are not 1:1 nore was it meant to be. I agree with you there. If there's a more specific point you want to make, I'm keen to hear it!

> the arguments against these types of laws aren’t based on the premise that these sites aren’t bad. I haven’t seen anyone saying that TikTok is a societal good. Almost everyone agrees there.

There's people in this thread talking about jews being behind this ban to ensure zionism continues, using only a social media agitprop post to justify it. We are in the mud at the moment, so I'm sorry but I'm not taking that for granted, people have diverse views.

> I’m saying that the main arguments are different. I am suggesting that there are more differences between the seatbelt debate and the age-verification-for-websites debate than there are similarities.

Let me try explain this figuratively:

A doctor might give free care to someone in a medical emergency on a plane after all they have an ethical responsiblity to do so if they can, but that doesn't mean they're obliged to care about your canker sore.

Now imagine a doctor not treating one or the other because "It's not that serious". It's the extent of the harm or risk that actually indicates how insane or sane that doctor's response is, just as much as the doctors actually response to it is.

We can sit here and say "yeah it's not that serious" but one patient is dying and another basically fine. Just like those people that thought drink driving wasn't that big of a deal, people think social media "oh yeah that's bad but what you going to do", it's the same shrug and 'oh well' attitude. That's what I think is eerlie similar. Now whether or not that's appropiate or not depends on whether you think the patient is having a heart attack, or just has a sore lip.

I do agree people aren't generally saying TikTok is good, but people are saying TikTok isn't so bad as to regulate age verification. Do you see how these things play into each other?

I think this is a bit of a conspiracy colordrops, honestly. It's the same sort of stuff as on Infowars.

> 1: "I get the feeling this has nothing to do with preventing harms"

> 2: "heres the harms and why I think we should prevent them"

Not trying to be rude here colordrops but I think you're being a too obtuse here, especially when the original person's comment was basically just "I don't trust them" (which is totally fair), I would rather engage in a good faith discussion of our opinions.

> This may be true

Do you think it's true?

I bet you Sky news gets more views through social media than TV broadcast these days! Many of their hosts are all over X, spreading misinformation. They are downstream from social media now, not seperate from it I suspect.

Murdoch benefits from the political agitation that the landscape of social media provides.

I do agree on making platforms moderate themselves. This legsliation helps do this by creating a discussion about the harms, enforcing a culture of harm (this is not for all ages, not default for everyone). Saying to the companies: "Hey, if you don't want to be regulated, clean up your platform so it's safer". Will that happen? no idea, but if it doesn't, no children is still a good goal (it's how you get there that has the contention).

>I feel like you haven't really been listening to the arguments against these types of age-verification-for-websites laws.

Or maybe I just have a different conclusion to you? Because I do care, I do try to listen to the arguments. I'm no stranger to advocacy for civil liberties, they are important to me. I think all else being equal, freedom should be valued more over harm prevention. So if I'm for these laws, consider that a sign of how bad these sites have become, not how uninformed I am.

> I mean, there's some similarities, of course. But I think there are some very stark differences.

Yep of course it's not a 1:1, I agree. I don't mean to imply that people saying the same arguments today are wrong simply because people in the past were, but it does make me think more about it when I spot the same rhetoric.

Often both sides have very reasonable concerns, as an example, the question isn't "should we have all or no freedom" Either extreme creates issues, yet both sides have valid arguments worth our time considering. We settle somewhere in the middle.

Here's one vox pop with the introduction of breathalizers in UK (1967): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_tqQYmgMQg

I don't think we should normalise children on platforms where the content contains political agitation, sexual and violent content, crypto and fintech scams, etc. Especially when this content is packaged up to them and commodified.

These platforms make more money than the ATO (Australian Tax Office) brings in a year. I think they have the moral obligation and means to create safer spaces- either inside or seperate from their adult platforms; they can reduce or prevent the types of harms when children are exposed to this type of content.

Whether this approach is the best one, or even worth it as it is written in law is definitely something you can argue, but the idea that there isn't a legitimate goal here (keeping children safe), just isn't true. I know not everyone that says this always has good intentions, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be preventing harm upon them.

If you look back at vox pops from when drink-driving laws were introduced, or when seatbelts became mandatory, or when ID requirements were tightened, the arguments for and against were eerily similar. We haven’t changed much in that regard, but now people wear seatbelts, children can’t buy cigarettes as easily as they used to, and drink-driving rates have fallen. I think these are noble goals.

Democratic institutions only have as much power as they're given.