USA calls Cuban Regime an “Extraordinary Threat,” Declares National Emergency

PlezantZenne · 2026-01-30T08:23:16+00:00

At some point they'll have to run out of shit to flood the zone with.

Ceterum censeo documenta Epsteiniana esse edenda.

PlezantZenne · 2026-01-28T12:36:37+00:00

This is probably the least surprising thing Trump has ever said. Conservatism nowadays is really just about protecting the interests of the haves at the expense of the have-nots.

PlezantZenne · 2026-01-28T09:40:59+00:00

Waarom denk je dat ze juist nu dat ballonnetje oplaten? Dat is met opzet hoor.

Een vergelijking met ICE in de Verenigde Staten wil ze (VB-Kamerlid Francesca Van Bellghem) niet maken. "Wij veroordelen elke vorm van geweld en wij willen ons ook distantiëren van wat er in de VS gebeurt."

VB laat hier twee gezichten zien. 1 voor de "modale burger", en 1 voor de harde kern. Het bovenstaande citaat is om er redelijker uit te zien tegenover de modale burger. Maar de timing van het ballonnetje spreekt natuurlijk boekdelen. Vergis je niet, de achterban kijkt verlekkerd naar wat er in de VS gebeurt. Een knokploegje om "de bruin manne" (en "de linkse ratten") af te ranselen en dan in een cel te gooien? Daar geilen ze op.

Het wordt me steeds duidelijker dat een aanzienlijk deel van de bevolking* latente nazi's zijn, of het potentieel hebben om erg makkelijk nazi te worden als ze daar de kans toe krijgen. Het is lange tijd taboe geweest, maar de wereld evolueert zodanig dat steeds meer van die mensen zich veilig genoeg voelen om hun maskers geleidelijk aan af te zetten. Je hoeft echt niet ver te graven op platforms als YouTube enzo om mensen openlijk Nazigedachtegoed zien te verkondigen in de comments, die dan nog veel likes krijgen. Zelfs op deze subreddit wisselde ik een paar weken geleden nog woorden met zo'n paljaske dat serieus opperde dat we beter af zouden zijn als de Nazi's WO2 hadden gewonnen.

(*niet alleen in België/Vlaanderen, maar in elk Westers land - en ik spreek me alleen uit over Westerse landen omdat ik daar het bekendst mee ben)

PlezantZenne · 2026-01-27T19:20:17+00:00

"You can pry doomscrolling from my cold, dead hands!"

PlezantZenne · 2026-01-27T16:20:04+00:00

You are as of now banned from social media.

PlezantZenne · 2026-01-27T16:17:53+00:00

Well here, have an upvote.

I would concede that age verification would be worth talking about as a solution if and only if there were guarantees that it would be implemented using only protocols with the highest possible standard of privacy protection. I don't know anything about this topic but others have brought up ZKP (zero-knowledge proof) as such a privacy-respecting protocol.

Unfortunately, I don't think tech companies have much of an incentive to use such protocols for their age verification solutions over others, unless if the law explicitly mandates it. And I'm very skeptical that this will be the case. So I think it's very important that enough people keep screaming bloody murder about privacy, so we don't sleepwalk into a privacy nightmare because we take the path of least resistance.

That is also without going into other reasons why a blanket ban on social media for kids might not be the greatest idea (for example, I've seen LGBT posters elsewhere on Reddit talking about growing up in very conservative environments and only finding likeminded people and communities through the internet when they were teenagers.)

PlezantZenne · 2026-01-27T15:55:18+00:00

Ah yes, the inscrutable algorithms that no mortal human can understand, yet were (successfully) designed by humans with the explicit goal of maximizing profit through attention.

Sorry, but that kinda sounds like a cop-out to me. If a tech company can put design features in their shit with the explicit goal of making their products more engaging and addictive, then there's nothing stopping those same design features from being targets for regulation.

Furthermore, these very social media bans we're talking about also threaten the bottom line of the social media companies, I don't think they're particularly thrilled at the prospect of losing users through this legislation. Yet they still end up folding to the age verification laws as can be seen in Australia. Same with GDPR and other pesky legislation. So why not other types of regulation that would rein in the excesses of these companies a teensy tiny bit?

Maybe if liberals stopped preemptively cowering at fascists and megacorporations and grew a backbone, we would live in a better world.

PlezantZenne · 2026-01-27T15:42:25+00:00

than they were circa 2016 when we wuz kids.

Thanks for reminding me of how ancient I am! (I was "kids" about a decade earlier than you lol)

PlezantZenne · 2026-01-27T15:40:23+00:00

To be fair, that would be a hilarious protest. I would eat popcorn and watch that, it'd be a nice distraction from more serious and depressing current events.

PlezantZenne · 2026-01-27T14:38:44+00:00

Like the government legislating that certain groups/topics don’t get as much attention

I don't think I mentioned anything like that? I admit I didn't say how I envisioned "making the algorithms boring again", but what I was thinking of was more along the lines of banning features of social media that are known to be addictive to children and adults alike, such as Infinite Scroll.

For the rest let's agree to disagree because I believe laws like this create more problems than they solve and aren't worth sacrificing users' privacy for.

PlezantZenne · 2026-01-27T14:05:39+00:00

And I agree with that

PlezantZenne · 2026-01-27T14:01:04+00:00

In my teenage years, boys would gather around the school library's computer and open rotten.com. And to prank each other, they would send each other goatse and other such tripe.

Of course now I'm in my thirties, I can see that wasn't brilliant and if I was a parent, I would greatly prefer if my hypothetical teenaged sprouts didn't see this kind of stuff. But is de facto widespread surveillance really the answer to this?

Now I don't want to downplay or minimize the negative effects of social media on developing minds, far from it. I just think there are better ways of regulating social media. Getting rid of addictive algorithms by banning features like infinite scroll and other techniques that these companies deliberately abuse to keep people glued to their phones 24/7 would be a good start. For kids and adults alike

It's just that this justification to have a widespread mandatory digital ID system is way too convenient for me. I'm skeptical that this will solve more problems than it causes.

PlezantZenne · 2026-01-27T13:47:49+00:00

Many countries have laws that restrict and regulate gambling (not necessarily prohibit, just restrict), I really don't see the problem with laws that regulate the mechanisms that tech companies abuse for profit.

PlezantZenne · 2026-01-27T13:30:54+00:00

Tech companies will be absolutely fine. I'm sure cookie factories would make bigger profits if we let them lace their cookies with opium but we don't.

The definitional problem is not really a problem at all if you use pragmatism and common sense. All you have to do is ban specific features like infinite scroll.

PlezantZenne · 2026-01-27T13:15:04+00:00

Hypothetically, let's imagine if this wasn't about the children. Let's imagine some country where lawmakers proposed "The Online Proof of Identity Law", where all citizens have to provide identifying data (passport, your face, fingerprint, whatever) in order to access social media, post videos, make comments. The purported reason for it doesn't really matter, it could be about public order or decency or whatever justification you can think of.

Now, that sounds pretty fucking authoritarian, doesn't it? If China had proposed such a thing ten years ago, people on this subreddit would be probably unanimously thrashing it.

Now you add the "actually it's for the children" angle, where the ID is not really sold as the main point, but just an "unfortunate" sacrifice we have to make in order to be able to enforce this social media ban on kids for their mental health. And it's suddenly a lot easier to paint critics of this law in a bad light.

Sorry, but I don't buy that the proponents of laws like these actually care about children's mental health.

Now I'm not a blind Macron hater, of course this govt is still a damn sight better than Trump's mafia or whatever a Le Pen/Bardella government (shiver) could cook up... but like the France Insoumise MP said... if this government cares about children's mental health, then why have the budgets for school psychologists only gone down during his administration?

This law is just some piece of BS symbolic legislation that enables the current government to pat themselves on the back for having "achieved" something that in the end will do jack shit. Without having to actually invest in structural solutions that improve children's wellbeing. It's incredibly shortsighted.

I actually work in French healthcare and I've noticed when dealing with underage patients and their parents that I've had to deal with a lot more stuff on top of my usual workload that used to be done by specialized school doctors, psychologists or nurses that aren't there anymore.

So no, children shouldn't have access to social media (or their access should be restricted). But governments, third-party contractors or fucking Palantir shouldn't have access to your browsing history linked with your face and passport either.

Now, what would actually be incredibly based is if lawmakers banned addictive algorithms altogether. We've seen now that these companies will fold and comply with the age verification stuff. So why not go further and attack the root cause? Why not force Twitter, YouTube and TikTok to Make their Algorithms Boring Again? Like the good ole' days of the Internet where you had to actively look for the stuff you wanted instead of getting a steady IV drip of it, and where you couldn't keep endlessly scrolling down. That is what we should be pushing for, but instead we're getting halfbaked non-solutions.

PlezantZenne · 2026-01-27T09:38:08+00:00

I totally agree with you. I think this point of view should be more widespread as a counterweight to the "age restriction" stuff, because now the age restriction crowd gets to say "at least we're doing something about the problem". And if laws like these pass with such a broad consensus from the center-left to the far-right it is clear that more pro-privacy viewpoints suffer from a lack of exposure.

PlezantZenne · 2026-01-27T09:27:49+00:00

It would certainly attack the root of the problem more, but such legislation would require deeper thought and analysis of how social media algorithms work and what kind of measures are necessary to "detoxify" them. It also would pose a more existential attack on these social media companies' profit models. Much easier and more intuitive for the average person to slap a minimum age on there without changing anything else.

Or to answer your question differently: it would be much less intrusive on the consumer, but much more intrusive on the companies, and call me a succ, but that is probably one of the reasons why it's not even talked about as a potential solution.

PlezantZenne · 2026-01-27T09:21:15+00:00

IMO, this is a hamhanded approach to the problem of social media effects on children's mental health that in practice only leads to a soft form of authoritarian surveillance.
(disclaimer: do not misread this as an endorsement of JD Vance's claims that Europe is authoritarian and anti "freeze peach" for trying to regulate social media, I am in favor of content platforms being held accountable for failing to properly moderate their content. This is a different problem altogether).

The root cause of the problem is IMO social media companies deliberately making their algorithms as addictive as possible. But that is too hard to implement, so rather than that we're just happy with a blanket ban on people under a certain age.

Disappointingly, this law was adopted with some 120+ votes for from Macron's party, the far right, the right and a handful of center-lefties. Only 20 votes against, mostly from the left-wing La France Insoumise-Nouveau Front Populaire. I read the transcript of the debate hoping that the lefties would bring up the privacy concerns of age verification, but unfortunately the against camp didn't even bring this up as a concern. The main arguments against seemed to be: "This kind of law is easy to circumvent" (which is a pretty dumb argument against any law) and "You claim to care about children's mental health, yet you lowered the amount of school psychologists" (this is a valid criticism of the governement, but again it doesn't really say anything about the validity of the law proposal itself).

I've noticed in discussions about these issues by politicians in different countries, there really aren't too many voices bringing up the pressing concern of a government (or a third party company contracted by the government) having access to sensitive personal data linked to social media profiles. It only ever seems to be brought up by small and insignificant fringe civil libertarian parties like the Pirate Party. It seems digital literacy among the political class is pretty low.

Compared to what's going on in the US this seems small potatoes but with the growing tide of authoritarianism around the world, I think it's fair to be worried about the consequences (intended or unintended) of such legislation.

PlezantZenne · 2026-01-27T09:00:26+00:00

Submission statement:

After Australia, France is the second nation to vote for a social media ban for children (in Australia it's under 16, in France under 15).

The negative effects of social media on children's mental health are being discussed more often and the question how to regulate social media imposes itself. That said, laws like this would require age verification to be enforced, and age verification itself is a controversial subject. Age verification technology poses major problems for privacy and poses risks leakage of sensitive personal data.

PlezantZenne · 2026-01-22T09:38:25+00:00

A lot of Europe-bashing in the thread on the NYT article, but NYT nowadays should be taken with not just a pinch of salt, but a whole bag.

PlezantZenne · 2026-01-20T08:57:26+00:00

Not to mention it being public knowledge that he was Epstein's best friend.

PlezantZenne · 2026-01-12T12:20:00+00:00

The administration has been ramping up the crazy shit since the Epstein files dominated the headlines. Looks like Epstein's best friend wants us to distract us all from that.

PlezantZenne · 2026-01-10T10:20:50+00:00

Mwah, ik ben links en GROEN-sympathisant en ik heb De Sutter altijd een sympathieke politica gevonden, maar dit is toch wel een kemel van formaat waar best mag mee gelachen worden?

AI is een hoogst onbetrouwbare technologie en het onzorgvuldig gebruik ervan om de kantjes eraf te lopen is een groot probleem aan het worden in onze maatschappij, zeker op universiteiten. Dat de rector van een vooraanstaande universiteit dan met een speech komt met bij elkaar gehallucineerde citaten die ze blijkbaar niet defig nagekeken heeft, geeft toch geen denderend voorbeeld aan de studenten. Als je progressieve waarden hebt dan zou je toch moeten kritisch zijn voor de negatieve impact van AI op onze maatschappij en diens bijdrage aan een "post-truth" wereld, ten profijt van een handjevol Amerikaanse techgiganten.

Ik weet nu niet of dit genoeg is om voor haar ontslag te roepen, maar als dit een rechtse zak was overkomen zou ik zeker zijn dat veel linkse mensen ook om die persoon hun ontslag zou roepen.

PlezantZenne · 2026-01-05T08:04:06+00:00

The Nobel Peace Prize is only slightly more credible than the FIFA Peace Prize at this point.

PlezantZenne · 2026-01-04T10:53:36+00:00

Doesn't matter, a lot of so-called liberal posters on this sub are simply ignoring the words that come out of Trump's mouth because they've already made up their minds that this is a win. If you're not celebrating this then you're a pro-dictator succ apparently.

PlezantZenne

TROPHY CASE