taizou @lion@computerfairi.es

so it might be easy to dismiss my opposition as being just some childless online weirdo, of course HE thinks there shouldn't be internet restrictions
but then you have someone like my mum who's the polar opposite of an online weirdo & has reached the same conclusion from first hand experience

cos I do appreciate I have my own perspective and biases - I'm someone who grew up with computers and the internet & am still heavily embedded in that world, I care about the rights and wellbeing of young people especially queer and isolated ones but do not have kids myself and do not work with them

i'm bringing this up not just to brag that my mum has good politics but to highlight this is the reaction of someone who spent most of her life working with kids, who knows damn well what the problems are, gets her news from pro-ban sources & isn't a tech enthusiast - even she thinks it sucks

so what does she think? great and much needed move Mr Starmer? LOL no
she thinks a ban is completely the wrong thing to do, won't work, has been massively rushed through, and the focus should be on regulating the companies and platforms rather than trying to force kids and teens off them

she had not heard about the curfew for 16/17s and actually laughed at how fucking stupid it was when I told her

my mum was a teaching assistant until recently & saw plenty of problematic social media usage among kids under 13 first hand so she knows the issues very well & would be receptive to measures to genuinely address them
she also watches the BBC where the case for a ban has been strongly pushed

I just remembered how the government claimed they'd trial different social media restrictions on groups of teenagers and study the effects before proceeding with anything but I suppose that's all gone out of the window now dickhead Starmer thinks it's politically expedient to push something through

Also "online products that are not covered by the ban – such as gaming apps – will face new restrictions such as having the option to chat to strangers removed"
I have no idea how a platform can distinguish "strangers" so I can only see this resulting in communication features being blocked outright

"There will also be restrictions for older teenagers up to the age of 18 that prevent “scrolling” late at night – after 8.30pm."
taking this as read they want to put a curfew on 16-17 year olds - who they want to give the vote, and who can join the army, and legally live alone - for SCROLLING??
You can only view content that fits on one screen after 8:30pm? And in what world is that "late at night"? The teens need to get up at 4am for their milk rounds now?

once again trying to parse out what they actually mean and what rights they are proposing to take away from these fuck ass articles written from a 3rd hand game of telephone amongst people who all have no idea about the technology they're trying to regulate is driving me insane

no offence to Australians but nothing described as "Australia plus" has ever been a good idea

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/jun/14/starmer-to-announce-australia-plus-ban-on-social-media-for-under-16s

drives me mad that i can only find out about what rights this fucking government wants to take away from people through second hand summary posts because they advance leak their policy announcements to paywalled right wing media

even the old trick of using that dodgy archive site doesn't seem to work on the times any more

how does govt micromanaging teens' internet use even square with the "parents rights" set (who to be clear i disagree with but have been a big part of this push)? surely it's not only taking away the rights of the child but also the parent to decide what kind of usage is appropriate for their child?

can't read this due to the times paywall but it seems like they actually are going with their stupidest fucking idea, digital curfews, with an arbitrarily higher age of 17??
they want 16 year olds to have the vote but at the same time Daddy Starmer is taking their phone away at bedtime??
https://bsky.app/profile/heatherburnstech.bsky.social/post/3moaaq3nnms2m

I did in the end manage to do it by retrying something I had tried before, which hadn't worked originally, but now it does 🤷

actually it won't even build on a machine i HAVE built it on before

nothing makes me feel like a fucking idiot who doesn't know anything quite like trying to build a C/C++ project on a machine i haven't built it on before

in some kind of outside place