Grump Master

I am grumpy. GRUMPY ABOUT THINGS.

[Preston Byrne @prestonjbyrne]

Google has exactly one data center in the UK.

All it has to do is threaten to close it and pull out its personnel. That is the answer to foreign censorship, it is the only answer, and the longer Big Tech ignores the option the more cancerous foreign regulation will become.

[Grump Master @grump_master]

@AlboMP I'd be very interested to see if the statistics around these laws revealed preferences that contrasted the supposed "mandate" you claim to have.

[Grump Master @grump_master]

@nollidzsab It reminds me of when websites would become useless in protest of a law that would impact the internet.

[Good old npzman @yourfeedofme]

The U16s social media ban is working exactly as intended.

It is a scam designed to force people to dox themselves by handing over ID & harvest biometric data via age estimation just to have a social media account.

Disband the eSafety Office & repeal the Online Safety Act 2021.

[Preston Byrne @prestonjbyrne]

“So far though it’s complete radio silence from the White House, on what will go down as perhaps the defining battle of internet freedom.”

I note a lot of noise but no action against the UK and EU’s digital censorship. They are running out of time to do it this Congress.

[Grump Master @grump_master]

@ReclaimTheNetHQ Stamp act? Very British

[Cam Spry @16BitViking]

These age-verification assholes don't think about the second-order effects of what they are suggesting.

Setting up new age-gating/ID requirements will require that 30 years of pre-existing + archived content online be censored, gated, or removed.

Additionally, the patchwork of legal requirements will make it impossible for anybody but the largest big tech players (with legal teams) to develop new sites and web apps. The era of the open & free hobbyist net will be over, and the big social media companies these people blame for fucking their kids up will be the only players left.

We're burning down the digital equivalent of the Library of Alexandria.

All so Little Johnny doesn't look at porn.

[Drew Pavlou 🇦🇺🇺🇸🇺🇦🇹🇼 @DrewPavlou]

Australia doesn't have an open primary system like the US so instead the major parties find new candidates through university student politics. This system is the worst of all worlds, attracting utter psychopaths with zero charisma, intelligence or personality.

They all do battle with each other for years and collect screenshots on one another to the point that everybody becomes part of one single unaparty incestuous clique held together by threat of Mutual Assured Destruction.

All personality is drilled out of them by party head kickers who control the means of promotion by giving out or witholding party staffer jobs. These jobs are extremely well paid by university student standards - where I survived uni years earning about $15,000 - $20,000 a year tutoring high school kids for cash, these party hack staffers would sometimes earn six figures at the age of 18, 19, 20.

So kids will do anything for these jobs, meaning that the parties are able to set up a ponzi scheme type system where legions of kids barely out of their teens will do hundreds of hours of unpaid volunteer party hack work in the desperate hope that they might one day get a job. This is how the major parties manage to wield their legions of volunteers. In the vast majority of cases it is barely ideological but instead motivated by a desperate desire for patronage.

Getting one of these jobs is seen as the first hurdle to preselection for an eventual career in Parliament. So you get 18 year olds who get their first ever job earning six figures working for a major party. They suddenly have money to splash around (by the standards of university student life), they are arrogant, they all think they will be PM one day. There's countless cases of rape and sexual assault and abuse and bullying and everybody looks the other way.

Their personalities change, they become robots. They guard everything they say because they already have a future political career plotted out. This is how you get cases like Albanese who literally never worked outside the Labor party machine in his entire life. He got a Labor hack job while in university, worked as a party official through his twenties, then entered Parliament in 1996. He's now the second longest serving MP. His entire life prior to becoming PM was simply the Labor Party. He never once worked outside the machine.

There's no hinterland, there's no character, there's no independent thought. These people are often extremely dull. If you're a free thinker, if you're curious, if you say what's on your mind - you can't get a hack job, meaning you can never get preselection, meaning you never get to be an MP, meaning you never get to be PM. So it selects only for the worst and dullest among us.

I remember the president of the Labor Club at my university told my friend at the university bar that they didn't know what social democracy was.

I also personally know a guy who is now a powerbroker for the LNP who when asked to name his favourite ever work of political theory pointed to the UK Liberal Democrat policy pamphlet ''The Orange Book: Reclaiming Liberalism.''

We have one of the worst systems for selecting political representatives in the entire democratic world.

[Grump Master @grump_master]

There's something really weird about the claim to be working to roll-back the "phone-based childhood" while ensuring a phone-based adulthood because most of these laws ensure the need for a smartphone in some fashion to verify age/identity.

[Jonathan Haidt @JonHaidt]

Congrats Malaysia, for joining Australia and Indonesia as countries currently enforcing age limits for having social media accounts, with Canada, the UK, the United Arab Emirates, Spain and many others soon to follow.

Kids can still read or watch what they want, but they no longer will get late night notifications, solicitations from strangers, and encouragement to post pictures of themselves for others to judge.

Malaysia's thoughtful regulations include both age limits AND design restrictions, showing how thoughtful policies can do both. 

Bravo Malaysia and congrats to Law Minister @AzalinaOthmanS and Communications Minister  @fahmi_fadzil for boldly protecting Malaysia's 9 million+ kids. 

More at
https://t.co/uoaSFwj3vr

[Grump Master @grump_master]

@JonHaidt There's something really weird about the claim to be working to roll-back the "phone-based childhood" while ensuring a phone-based adulthood because most of these laws ensure the need for a smartphone in some fashion to verify age/identity.

[Grump Master @grump_master]

Just give us your personal ID... just because okay!

[Nix @Dragonix101]

The fact that people were raised being told our whole lives that you should never ever give your personal information out to strangers on the internet, and now suddenly it's no longer an issue just baffles me.

It's like everyone forgot what cybersecurity is and why we had it

[Grump Master @grump_master]

"I'm sorry, do you have a license for that bicycle helmet?"

[WasAcop @WasAcop]

🚨VPNs to be forced to collect digital id data🚨

UK Labour government is pushing draconian digital control under the guise of “child safety.”

The House of Lords amendment now forces VPN providers to implement highly effective age assurance (ID checks, biometrics, etc.) to block under-18s from using consumer VPNs.

This comes right as they announce a full social media ban for under-16s — with further “VPN restrictions” due in July.

They’re turning privacy tools into surveillance gateways.

Digital ID-style verification creeping in everywhere.

This isn’t protection. It’s overreach.

Proof:
• Lords amendment text: https://t.co/qhZ0z3nKxR
• Lords vote & details: https://t.co/3Hv4zDaeob
• Liz Kendall on July VPN update + social media ban: https://t.co/4r67cC24JO
Wake up before it’s too late.

[Workhouse Overseer 🌐🥑🍌 @RepealTCPA1947]

If every convo you had with your mates down the pub was recorded forever, could come back years later to get you fired from your job or even arrested, lots of people would start trying to hide their identity at the pub too

[Grump Master @grump_master]

@Mon4Kooyong I'd much prefer the ping pong game of "We can be worse!" would stop.

[J’accuse @Jaccusepaper]

Mad mothers and far-left agitators are wrecking the lives of millions of teenagers.

https://t.co/l1we2Fs8ny

[OpinionEver @opinionever]

In Australia the law was a bit more flexible, the social media companies just had to assure that the user was over 16. People that created their accounts in the 2000s or early 2010s were automatically assumed to be 16+. Since most adults made their accounts around that time, nobody got asked for ID. This had the effect that most adults didn't think anything of the ban and still think it doesn't affect them. It's just younger people that will be indoctrinated into uploading ID to access everything.

[Grump Master @grump_master]

Haidtful individual blocks replies as a reflection of what they wish to do to the online public square.

[Reclaim The Net @ReclaimTheNetHQ]

13 years ago this month, the Guardian broke the Snowden story...the biggest mass surveillance exposé in history.

Today it calls your concern about ID-linked browsing, spyware in your photos and messages, and broken encryption, "fake outrage" while Starmer's government demands backdoors into your iCloud and calls for people to be arrested for tweets.

The watchdog became the lapdog.

[Grump Master @grump_master]

@The_AVPA @JonSchweppe Didn't Yoti get hit by researchers recently for effectively leaking the sites one might verify for to the bank if they used credit card verification?

[The_War_Economy @The_War_Economy]

This can and should end with all tech companies just blacklisting the United Kingdom.

Why would anybody even start a tech company in this country?