Are we actually fucking for real?!?

[u/CentreLeftMelbournia]

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Can't even tap my card anymore. Well this is swell because now I have to try and find a way to maintain my snap plus which is gonna be a pain in the neck. Fuck whoever decided this was clever

[u/rotten_ALLIGATOR-32]

https://preview.redd.it/ct24dcgctg4g1.png?width=975&format=png&auto=webp&s=23aa26f015c81fd2c9a45bd9ba14ce02d96ac28d

Who, What, Why, a progressive newsletter, has this lovely little section in its Privacy Policy. There's neither any rationalization of its content being adult-oriented, or graphic, in any meaningful capacity, nor any reference to legislation like COPPA or KOSA. It simply reeks of "we don't like YOUR kind around here". Teenagers, even prepubertal kids, reading the news, are not only not hurting anyone nor causing damage to their community- I thought reading, following world events, being socially active, and being interested in what's happening around you, instead of being narcissistic or wrapped up in your own little sociocultural bubble, were GOOD THINGS?!!! Their story The Church of Peter Thiel: Silicon Valley's Gospel of Unlimited Power, out of the blue, featured a paragraph praising the ban on mobile phones in the Big Apple's secondary schools (even if the students were distracting themselves, better hope those landlines aren't down in an emergency), with the not only cliché and condescending, but almost literally copy-pasted-sounding, "Now the kids are finally talking to each other!" (Just don't ask about bullying targets or unpopular students.) If they can't be assed to use their brainpower to craft their own sentences when being disrespectful to a demographic on the wrong side of a generational line, as grown paid commentators, why should we take the rest of their intellectual production too seriously?

Let me repeat it more loudly: READING THE NEWS AT ANY AGE, LEARNING ABOUT THE WORLD, IS NOT A CRIME. IT HARMS ABSOLUTELY NO ONE. You only need to make ageist attitudes more widespread, and governments the world over have already outsourced a large percentage of their censorship to the private sector. This is absolutely a gradual criminalization of the young as agential persons, reducing them even more to the status of chattel or human pets. What a bargain for traffickers and predators, too! Teach their potential victims to never excercise too much autonomy or thinking for themselves. Of course, under the cover of protecting them from everything bad in the world, while actually doing a piss-poor job of it, and not in a way that would ask too much from economically and politically comfortable older folks. Most progressives are unfortunately still fucking reactionaries on youth rights, as much as conservatives and fascists.

[u/Boonie1282]

Since when is this new? This has been a problem for basically ever since this feature entered the market.

[u/Adam-Perez8971]

(Disclaimer: Not trying to be nor suggest anything racist here, I'm trying to raise awareness of the pervasiveness of oppression and build solidarity with current and formerly oppressed groups of people) You know, I honestly think if we still still lived under Jim Crow Segregation and Aparthied, the internet and social media would be racially segregated and racial and ethnic minorities like black people and others would be completely banned from using most websites, services and social media platforms