Protecting Kids by Nuking GitHub
A Masterclass in Bureaucratic Stupidity
Bit earlier than I expected, but here we are: Australia, once again, proving it’s the technocratic clown car of the Western world. We’re not even driving at this point, we’re swerving down the freeway with the steering wheel duct-taped to a wombat and Parliament clapping like seals in the back seat.
The eSafety Commissioner has now started firing off letters to companies about the under-16 social media ban. And listen, I don’t like being a prophet of doom (that’s a complete lie, I love it), but I said ages ago that this law was so broad it would spill out from TikTok thirst traps and Facebook boomer memes into the entire structure of the internet.
And guess what? Bugger me sideways with a didgeridoo, I was right. Again.
The confirmed hit list? Oh, buckle up:
Meta (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, basically the boomer-to-zoomer pipeline)
Snapchat
TikTok
YouTube (which seems to exist in quantum uncertainty: sometimes banned, sometimes not. Schrodinger’s Content Farm.)
X (Twitter, renamed by a man who thought buying a website was cheaper than therapy)
Pinterest
Reddit
Twitch
Fine. Whatever. Actual social media. But then, dating apps, because apparently the true national emergency is a 15-year-old accidentally swiping right on Tinder. Quick, send the army.
Then it snowballs into online gaming. Which, might I remind you, was explicitly promised to be exempt. And yet:
Roblox
LEGO Play
Steam (yes, Steam, the platform where teenagers can download Civilization and lose six hours trying to invent communism, which is clearly more dangerous than TikTok dances)
If Club Penguin still existed, they’d have executed that poor bird on live TV by now.
Messaging apps? Also “not included” originally. But this is Australia, where rules are like a Woolies sale sign, they change depending on the mood of the staff. So now:
Discord. A glorified group chat for nerds now apparently a “national threat.”
And then, the pièce de résistance. The rotten cherry on top of this flaming pavlova:
GitHub. Bloody GitHub.
A code repository. A place where devs argue about semicolons and whether tabs are superior to spaces (they are). Somehow, this is now considered social media for children. Did someone in Canberra see a pull request titled “hotfix/users-are-our-qa-team” and decide it was corrupting the nation’s youth? Are we banning Mathletics next? Physics? Maybe we should just torch the CSIRO while we’re at it, make it nice and tidy.
This isn’t “protecting kids.” This is a land grab. If it’s big enough to matter, they’ll either smother it in red tape or run it out of the country. They’re even openly admitting they expect legal pushback, which means they know they’re wrong. But hey, it’s not their money. It’s ours. So let’s burn taxpayer cash on lawsuits with multinational corporations while Australians can’t afford eggs or rent.
And the collateral damage? Whole industries. Indie game devs: dead. You can’t release your quirky little platformer on Steam anymore, so congrats, the only games left are whatever soulless grindfest the AAA studios shovel out. The tech sector? About to be curb-stomped. It’s like our government collects industries like Pokémon cards, just to throw them in the shredder once they evolve.
The cherry on top? They can’t even stick to their own rules. First it was “online games aren’t applicable.” Now Roblox is in the firing line. Then it was “messaging apps are fine.” Now Discord is treated like it’s North Korea’s comms hub. It’s whiplash policymaking, like playing musical chairs with live grenades. And all of us in tech are expected to “comply” by December 10, as if this Kafkaesque nightmare has any clear rules.
At this point, just admit what it is: control. Not safety, not morality, not “protect the children.” Control. Canberra wants the keys to the internet, and ASIO’s licking its lips for the leftovers. Because nothing says “safety” like nuking the platforms that run half the world’s collaboration, education, and culture.
If they really cared about kids, maybe - hear me out - they’d fix housing affordability, so parents don’t have to shove their 12-year-old in front of Roblox just to get a break from the second job they’re working to keep the lights on. But no, it’s easier to declare war on GitHub and pretend you’ve saved the children.
December 10 is coming, and with it, the great Australian internet lobotomy. No grace period, no clarity, just chaos, lawsuits, and the government cosplaying as China Lite.
We’re not even circling the drain anymore. We’ve been flushed.