I don’t get any pleasure or excitement from saying “I told you so,” but here it is. The Online Safety Act was introduced into legislation in October 2023. I wrote about how awful it was then. I’ve written about how awful it was several times since. It is awful. It’s a stunningly brilliant piece of terrible thinking. It’s like a bunch of people got together in a room and began working up idea for children to ignore. Then they made those ideas into a law and are, apparently, surprised when, three years later, children are ignoring their ideas:
Well, it was obvious from the outset that it wasn’t going to work.
You, me and all the right thinking people of the world knew this.
But… just what IS the answer? How do we curb all the shit that social media brings with it?
There’s no easy answer.