Collective Shout, a small but vocal lobby group, has long called for a mandatory internet filter that would prevent access to adult content for everyone in Australia. Its director, Melinda Tankard Reist, was recently appointed to the stakeholder advisory board for the government’s age assurance technology trial before the under-16s social media ban comes into effect in Australia in December.

  • Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world
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    14 hours ago

    What’s even the argument here? Steam already has parental control options, age gates, and content filters… if you don’t want your kids seeing that shit on steam, then, like, don’t let em?

    …meanwhile, let’s just continue shoving blatant gambling down minors’ throats in the form of lootboxes.

    • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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      10 hours ago

      This group isn’t interested in protecting children they’re just interested in pushing their own beliefs on everybody else. The easiest way they can do that is to pretend that they’re interested in children. Which I’m sure some of them are, but not in the capacity that anyone wants them to be.

      It’s a classic right-wing tactic. Because nobody wants to be against a law that protects children.

    • Lebensmittel@sh.itjust.works
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      14 hours ago

      The argument is control. Religious zealots are all about controlling society and subduing people to follow their rules (that they themselves tend to break all the time)

      • Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world
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        14 hours ago

        That’s their goal for sure, what I mean is how are they pretending to justify it?

        There’s usually some on-paper benevolent veneer to wrap their hateful bullshit up with.

        For example, they hate trans people, but they don’t campaign on that out loud - they justify that hated under the guise of shit like protecting bathrooms.

        But this is fucking Steam - access to that bathroom is already under lock and key behind an armed guard. They can’t just pull the “think of the children!” card when the children already have a myriad of protections.

        …or maybe they can, considering what just happened. We live in stupid times.

        • Lebensmittel@sh.itjust.works
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          12 hours ago

          They precisely can and they kinda just did. “Think of the children” is the magic phrase to shut down critical thinking and give you carte blanche to do whatever you want.

          • ApatheticCactus@lemmy.world
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            10 hours ago

            Not always. School shootings happen and suddenly crickets on gun control. “Think of the children” only applies to moral outrage, not tangible physical threat prevention. Also applies to school lunches and any other actual tangible thing to ACTUALLY benefit general child welfare.

        • stratoscaster@lemmy.world
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          12 hours ago

          They are quite literally lying about the content of games like GTA V. They pulled the whole “the goal of the game is killing women” schtick

        • mriswith@lemmy.world
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          11 hours ago

          That’s their goal for sure, what I mean is how are they pretending to justify it?

          The same way they always do: “WONT SOMEBODY THINK OF THE CHILDREN!?!?!?!1111”

        • Beero@lemmy.world
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          14 hours ago

          They want a nanny state to do their parenting for them, cus they are shit parents who spend their time petitioning the government about things they could just fucking unplug.

          • FosterMolasses@leminal.space
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            8 hours ago

            Bingo. They’re just projecting their failures as inadequate parents because they didn’t realize how hard child rearing would be after knocking up their high school sweetheart and buying a white picket fence. It’s always the same case.

    • rottingleaf@lemmy.world
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      11 hours ago

      And the reason sexual things had to be filtered was that they are harmful and skew kids’ perception of healthy sexuality.

      Gambling wasn’t considered healthy even where and when marrying a toddler was normal. After all, a traumatized person with unhealthy sexuality does generally understand they are traumatized, a person taught that addiction is normal - not.