There are times when you can’t help it. You feel like you’ve lived that moment before. You’ve heard those words before. You had that same sense of dread before.

This week has been a bit like that.

It all started with the news that Trump was receiving FIFA’s first Peace Prize. The world’s governing body of football has created a prize in the lead up to the World Cup next year, just to appease Donald Trump, who was still (it’s fair to assume) very sad that he didn’t get the Nobel Peace Prize.

And a sense of déjà vu filled me. The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded many times to people who, not only did not deserve it, but who were war criminals or at the very least killing people in ways that breached international law. It would be too obvious to cite Henry Kissinger so, instead, I will mention Barack Obama, who certainly knew how to speak, how to sell hope, how to present himself, but was awarded the Peace Prize when he escalated and drastically increased the number of murders with drones.

So, Trump was given the FIFA Peace Prize at the same time as Trump and his administration have been killing fishermen in international waters and Venezuelan waters. As they escalate the war rhetoric and are, quite openly, saying that this is all about regime change and oil - because Venezuela has the largest reserves of oil in the world.

Déjà vu. I was transported back to 2005 when we heard the same arguments, the same rhetoric, from the Bush administration and its allies.

We have been sold these kind of lies before and thankfully, watching Jon Stewart and The Daily Show confirmed that I wasn’t going crazy. That my sense of déjà vu was not misplaced.

The Daily Show is a satirical news show but it often shines the brightest when it breaks down how politicians and the media are manipulating certain issues, or when they do a montage of what they were saying then and what they’re saying now. The episode with Jon Stewart this week is a perfect example of that.

Then, the Teen Social Media Ban came around. Wednesday December 10. The day of reckoning. When the government finally followed and fulfilled the wishes of Wippa and the Murdoch Press.

My son is 14. He hasn’t tried to be sneaky. He hasn’t lied. His Google account clearly knows that he’s 14 and, of course, YouTube is linked to his Google account. Thankfully, he doesn’t use any other social media.

As he was getting ready to go to school, my son sat down to have breakfast at the table. He opened his laptop and said: “I’ll see if I’ve been kicked out of YouTube.”

He logged in.

He was surprised, but his account was still active. I said to him, “well, enjoy it while it lasts because it should kick you out some time today, I’m sure.”

It took until Friday.

But where’s the déjà vu here? I was meant to be talking about déjà vu.

Let’s summarise. The campaign for the Teen Social Media Ban started with Wippa at Nova, then it was picked up by the Murdoch Press and within a month PM Albanese supported the campaign. Then the legislation was rushed through in Canberra with the public given only about 24 hours to comment.

A year ago, my wife thought it was a good idea. I agreed that something has to be done but I also expressed some concerns and as time goes by it’s been becoming clearer that something with this legislation was amiss.

When politicians and governments rush policy and new legislation, you can always smell the rot. And it’s the same this time. While the purported need for this Social Media Ban was to protect children, it’s clear now that there were other forces and interests at play.

The Lamestream team and Cam Wilson over at Crikey have done an excellent job of digging out the dirt and covering the rot. The fact that Wippa and his 36 Months group were invited to the United Nations and they were selling selling a ‘United Nations General Assembly Sponsorship’ for $150,000 in the lead-up to the Australian government-hosted event says a lot. Profiting from the campaign was important to this people.

But that wasn’t enough. The need for more power, influence and money can’t ever be satiated. So, it has also been revealed that the 36 Months lobby group was also funded and co-staffed by a firm making gambling ads. And, of course, the government is about to totally drop the ball in regulating gambling ads. Probably under the cover of the Teen Social Media Ban and in the lead up to Christmas, when everyone is distracted and Canberra is empty of politicians and the press.

And that fills me déjà vu again, because when lobby groups and politicians get together to protect children, it’s never about the children. It’s about power, influence and money.

They could’ve lobbied for the algorithms in social media platforms to be opt in for users. Without aggressive algorithms pushing all sorts of junk, we would all be better, we would all benefit. Not just teenagers.

They could’ve advocated for a digital duty of care. To force social media platforms to clean their act.

The could’ve advocated for interoperability, so users could move to a different platform. that cared about their privacy, that didn’t push junk on to their feeds and didn’t have ads and scams every few posts while retaining all their contacts, posts, etc., while still retaining all their posts, feeds, contacts, etc.

But regulating the big tech companies and social media platforms was deemed to difficult. Instead, it was a lot easier to rollout a ban to kids.

And here we are in the ultimate déjà vu. We know, everyone knows that bans never work. They just push people to other darker avenues, or to find ways around the ban.

So here we are again. Déjà vu. And like always, in this kind of situation, I can’t help but remember Monty Python’s déjà vu skit.

KICKING AROUND THE NET

• ALIA President Jane Cowell has published a blog post on Medium discussing libraries as the best defence against misinformation and I couldn’t agree more. School are absolutely essential and media studies at school is essential (I’ll say it again, it should be a compulsory core subject), but libraries are best placed to develop media and information in the community. Not just reaching children, but also adults, seniors, and everyone in the community.

• In fact, following that thread, there was an important reminder by the Australian Media Literacy Alliance this week that as the teen social media ban is being rolled out this week, too many students are missing out on media literacy education. If the issue is so concerning and so important to ban under 16s from using social media, why not educate them? As the statement reads: “Young people are frequently calling for more holistic and consistent media literacy education in schools that reflects their diverse use of social media and prepares them for when they turn 16.” Yes, the government’s 2024 announcement of $3.8 million for Australia’s first National Media Literacy Strategy, is important and it’s welcome. But so much more is needed.

• Australia Reads has published some advice on getting children and teens reading and I’m happy to see that it includes children’s voices. It’s important to listen to children and teenagers. What do they want to read? And how can adults support them? I’ve always believed that there are three important and essential pillars: a) they need to be able to choose what they read freely b) they need to see adults around them reading and sharing that love of reading and c) adults are there to guide them, but never force them to read or to share in conversation. Guide them quietly, offer opportunities quietly.

• And in that spirit of listening to young adults, now that the social media ban is in place, it was great to read what those affected by the ban think about it and how it will affect them. Why Not is doing a great job giving a voice to young people and it was great to read how this will affect their identity, their access to information, health, etc. Excellent post.

• The State Library of Victoria has back tracked on their aggressive plans for restructure that would’ve gutted the library service. They say the plan had “created unintended consequences,” and that they will “refine our approach.” But the lack of consultation, the 2019 restructure, and horror stories emerging from staff definitely point to broken trust and systemic issues that will be hard to repair. I have spoken with some SLV staff who have left in between 2019 and now. They describe a really bad culture from the board and upper management that doesn’t value librarians, doesn’t see the library as a place for everyone and anyone to go and learn, to access information, a people’s university, but sees it, instead, as a commercial, touristic place for engagement. Carolyn Fraser, a former SLV staff member has published an excellent and poignant article on The Saturday Paper well worth a read, that checks out with what I’ve heard from other former SLV staff.

• The International Committee of the Red Cross has warned that artificial intelligence models are making up research papers, journals and archives. In fact, it’s becoming evident that an increasing and disturbing number of the papers published in journals these days are AI generated.

• Brian Merchant has published a terrifying post in his Blood in the Machine newsletter where he presents the testimonies of quite a number of copyeditors who have lost their jobs due to AI. As more and more jobs are being lost and writing is increasingly done by AI, these testimonies are an important reminder of what we’re losing.

PHOTO OF THE DAY

I took this photo back in 2004. I was there travelling with my wife and three from my hometown who were visiting Australia for three weeks. Our five days in the outback were the highlight of those three weeks. When I have really busy weeks and the last few have been like that (for some reason the lead up to the end of the year is always frighteningly mad) I wish that I was somewhere in the outback, or somewhere deep in the mountains and forests of the Basque Country, away from all this madness. The time will come.

That’s all for this week. As always, I’d love to hear from you if you have any comments. Also, I’d love to hear from you if you have any articles, videos, podcasts, etc. that you think I may have missed but would love. All the best for the end of the year. I can’t promise a post next weekend. Although, I may just publish something short.