>What social networks are these?

well for one: I find it humorous how this law has an exception for Roblox. That really speaks to how up to date lawmakers are on the situation (or worse: how easy it was for Roblox to pay them off). I don't see how it's a slippery slope when the corruption is before our very eyes.

Each company was required to put a statement to the eSafety commission explaining why they should be exempt from the law, even GitHub. The eSafety commission also have an open monitoring period where they'll repeal the law if it isn't working as intended, and will release research.

I don't think it's just corruption, there are people who are trying to do the right thing, even if flawed.

Roblox AND DISCORD. Somehow YouTube is considered “dangerous” though.

YouTube is just a content hose though and it does not care what it shows you, you can go down some dark routes with YouTube just by letting it play.

YouTube didn’t make it through because of how it actively pushes alpha male crap at teenage boys. The Tate brothers and others who push the whole toxic masculinity, man are superior, men must protect women even from themselves, to be a man you must be able to fight, men are owed a position of power and women should be subservient, etc. It was a very strong feature in the early debate, and something educators put in as part of their submission as being an extremely noticeable shift for young men, and those same young men quite consistently stating the same content they viewed.

YouTube’s tendency to push extreme rabbit holes and funnel towards extremism and conservatism in young men is what led to them being included.

"YouTube is targeted for a ban because it shows children conservative viewpoints" seems somehow simultaneously an obvious free speech violation and a proper own-goal for the conservatives pushing these rules.

You seem to be telling on yourself if you think Andrew Tate's viewpoints are representative of conversative viewpoints and not just toxic misogyny.

Anyone can find specific things to dispute about Tate's views, but "traditional gender roles exist for a reason" is obviously not the position associated with the left.

You're putting Tate's views in an overly good light with the way you represent it. "traditional gender roles exist for a reason" is the very lightest possible way you can phrase his viewpoint.

He hates women, to the point of trafficking them. He's a predator and he spreads hate, and it reflects poorly on conservatives if they feel that represents their political views.

There is a generic flaw in humanity that controversy brings popularity. The result is that if you take the core of something popular (e.g. the political beliefs of half the population) and then sprinkle some rage bait on top of it, you'll have an audience. This is the business model for the likes of Tate.

The problem is, it's also an asymmetric weapon when you try to ban that unevenly. If you censor Tate but not the likes of Kendi who use the same tricks, you're saying that it's fine for one side to play dirty but not the other, and that's how you get people mad. Which plays right into the hands of the demagogues.

So all you have to do is achieve perfect balance and censor only the bad things from both sides, right? Except that that's one of the things humans are incapable of actually doing, because of the intensely powerful incentive to censor the things you don't like more than the things you do, if anyone holds that power.

Which is why we have free speech. Because it's better to let every idiot flap their trap than to let anyone else decide who can't. And if you don't like what someone is saying, maybe try refuting it with arguments instead of trying to silence them.

> There is a generic flaw in humanity that controversy brings popularity.

Not necessarily. You need to have that controversy shown to enough people of similar mindsets, which requires a platform, or for them to somehow grow their local audience, which was difficult for folks on the fringe to do in the past, but is easy now that social media promotes the fringe.

> So all you have to do is achieve perfect balance and censor only the bad things from both sides, right?

No. Regulate social media that drives views to these people. They're able to exist because social media uses algorithms based on engagement, and these people game the engagement system to slowly radicalize them. If you remove the pipeline, you also lower the popularity of these people.

Sure, some of this is word of mouth, but it's mostly not. Social media actively encouraging people to view this content.

> Because it's better to let every idiot flap their trap than to let anyone else decide who can't.

Yes, but free speech doesn't include the right to be platformed. Depending on the country, the definition of free speech also differs, and I have a feeling you're only considering this from the US point of view.

"YouTube is targeted because it shows children hate content, which happens to be a popular viewpoint of conservatives."

Fixed that for you.

"YouTube didn’t make it through because of how it actively pushes alpha male crap at teenage boys"

Which previously parents could blocking using the parental tools. Now they cannot because logged out will still show said videos.

The government are idiots

>What social networks are these?

That's the point, there are always fringe social networks you don't know, and they are probably x10 toxic than reddit comment sections.

It's a bad point though, because those are fringe and don't have network effects that would pressure most children to join them. You become a social outcast if you don't participate in <popular social media of the day>, but the kids participating on fringe sites are likely already outcasts.

We should be aiming to remove purposely addictive things from our children's lives, and all currently popular social media platforms are addiction machines.

>Slippery-slope arguments,

Slippery slope arguments exist because the act of governing has the tendency to converge on ratchet effects. It never bloody loosens, do every damn inch has to be treated with maximal resistance.

Sure, except that for the most part conservatives seem to be happy to watch their rights slide right down a hill when conservatives are in charge. See the entirety of US politics at this point.

Society already puts limits on children's access to media, their access to addictive substances, advertising that's allowed to be shown to them, etc. The internet, and especially social media, is a gap in the existing limits. This isn't a slippery slope, it's adding a missing set of compliance.

Social media is: media, addictive, shows unregulated advertising to them, is psychologically harmful, and their algorithms have been radicalizing them.

Regulation is absolutely needed here. I'd rather see tight regulation, rather than being blocked completely, but social media companies have been highly resistant to that. For example, they shouldn't be allowed to show advertising, they shouldn't be able to do tracking, they shouldn't be allowed to have an algorithm led feed, notifications should be mostly off by default (and any notification that is shown to primarily exist to make you open the app should be disallowed).

The problem with changes like that is that they destroy the network's engagement and remove their profit, and for the most part, it's changes adults would like to see as well. Making those changes for some countries laws would push other countries to introduce similar laws and not limit them to children.