Post #2103318
2026-04-27 16:40 UTC
@leftylabourtech @pluralistic
I dunno. I'm not a fan of proprietary for-profit social media; so, I'm in favour of anything that limits its use.
I notice in discussions of the issue that people often claim that big tech (IE, Meta) "had been asking the US government for this type of regulation". However, no proof is ever given of this dubious claim (dubious, I feel, because big business rarely asks to be regulated, especially if the goal of such regulation is to curtail use of its product by a segment of the population, which is the case here).
So, I looked it up and found a BBC article on the subject of Australia's law. It states,
"social media companies were aghast when the ban was first announced in November 2024."
"aghast" suggests, contrary to the claims of the various freedom fighters online, that big social media companies were not begging for this regulation to happen.
Regarding Manitoba, I did look up their current bills, but as yet I don't see it. I think they've yet to draw it up.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwyp9d3ddqyo
https://web2.gov.mb.ca/bills/43-3/index.php
Replies (2)
-
@leftylabourtech@mstdn.social 2026-04-27 16:47
@markgrieveson @pluralistic You are forgetting that much of the "value" in centralized social media platforms is the data that they collect on end users. That is the "gold". Laws like this allow them to collect more "gold" which they can either aggregate for advertisers or feed into their AI engines to train them. We don't yet know what the Manitoba bill will look like. It was just annouced at a party fundraiser. But, like most of these kinds of bills, it will be bad.
-
@me@social.jlamothe.net 2026-04-29 05:00
@markgrieveson "social media companies were aghast when the ban was first announced in November 2024." Because the things these companies say publicly can always be taken at face value. 🙃