alt Hacker NewsI don't think this is a left- or right-wing issue: Australia was one of the first to ban kids from social media, and Australia is not right-wing by any measure. Canada is hardly right-wing, but age verification is bill S-210 in their parliament.
What you're seeing is a coordinated push by transnational interests; Meta's name has come up in discussions of the funding behind this push. At the very lest, verifying age also verifies that a person is real and not a bot, so advertising firms like Meta will benefit from verification. That's not right-wing or left-wing but rather the influence of business over the political, and neither wing of the spectrum is immune to corruption.
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In Europe Chat Control was pushed by the left-wing Danish government (Social Democrats). And I am still pissed that Trump went with his Greenland nonsense so everyone rallied around the Danes, when in reality the important news is that Mette Frederiksen and her party seem to have vested interest in establishing mass surveillance across the EU bloc.
Meta was strongly against the Australian social media ban.
Separate from this policy debate I think you’ll find Australia is a country where the right frequently wins actual majorities of the vote.
>I don't think this is a left- or right-wing issue: Australia was one of the first to ban kids from social media, and Australia is not right-wing by any measure. Canada is hardly right-wing, but age verification is bill S-210 in their parliament.
I'd classify both as very corporate friendly, far centrist, which is just as good as "right wing". Nothing about actually empowering the masses, and even less so the working class, only elite pseudo prograssive talking points.
Agreed, it clearly isn't a matter of left vs right. It's about liberal vs illiberal values. Unfortunately for all of us, liberty is falling out of favor.