Netflix's Adolescence Is a Trojan Horse for Online Censorship and Surveillance
reclaimthenet.orgHaven’t seen the series yet, but I do have some exposure to the underlying problem.
Online bullying and social media pressure are real issues that cannot be ignored. At home, we tackle it by appropriate parental controls, education, and transparency. However , we are privileged to have the time, money, and awareness, for this to happen.
I genuinely feel we need some generic change, somewhere, (I don’t have answers) to incentivize companies to do the right thing to discourage continuous engagement and also build the right set of judgement skills needed by teens to navigate online social space.
It probably starts at home and perhaps an online social media class in school.
Parents could of course give their children locked-down devices, that can only access a whitelisted set of websites, enforce time limits on use, and possibly filter content. Such software, in so much as it doesn't already exist, could be made very user-friendly to the parents, and come with decent defaults, so that even parents without the "time, money, and awareness" could benefit. Those with those privileges could of course customize the filters to their liking. This software could even be government-funded, so that they get to "do something".
But then they would not have an excuse to expand online surveillance and censorship.
Force people to be anonymous and not share too much data with these platforms. Create privacy protections that do shield users from being exploited by said platforms and regulate advertisers thoroughly.
Being anonymous usually helps a lot against bullying and yet I doubt that is in the interest of online saviors in our political class.
Any reasons why Netflix would so eagerly act as Starmer's Ministry of Truth?
Or are they just cashing in on that market's Moral Panic du jour?
If the latter - savvy on-line freedom fighters might want to do battle a bit further back in the causal chain.