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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   26539 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 23, 2026

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The laws and courts are increasingly taking the position that the optimal number of minors on the Internet is zero.

This is a position that if you told me I would've adopted 15 years ago, I'd have called you crazy. But I've increasingly come over to that side of the aisle.

Growing up in a family that always worked closely in infosec, I was always much closer than the average person to understanding the ways in which your life can be negatively impacted by tech. Over the years I've become much more taken up with the thinking of people like Michael Bazzell and some of his prescriptions for minimizing your digital footprint. I was never one of those privacy absolutist types, but I've never bought in completely to the appeal of things like social media. People I know 'always' send me Instagram feeds, YouTube videos and all the digital eye candy horseshit all the time. "Hey cousin, watch this!," "Hey dude, check this out...," "Yo Tre, look at this and tell me what you think...;" and I always skip right over it and never view it. I don't like this kind of social voyeurism into everyone else's lives, it always seemed to play to people's vanity and negative impulses and empowered people to invade the cracks in the lives of others. It’s creepy as hell.

At this point, my main issue is with how this is enforced. A world without children on the internet would be a better one. But how do you ensure children don't access the internet without doing away with any semblance of online privacy?

But how do you ensure children don't access the internet without doing away with any semblance of online privacy?

Because "doing away with any semblance of online privacy" is the point, the children are just a convenient Trojan horse.

I think you can agree that people overshare on the Internet while also being against the mass surveillance necessary to ensure the number of minors on the Internet is zero.

Part of the problem is that "massive amount that people overshare," people are trained into thinking is "normal."

Exactly. It's like the, "hey wiretap, can you give me a recipe for pancakes?" meme or, more spicily, Eric Cartman walking around bitching about the surveillance state whilst taking all of his calls on speakerphone.

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