Technology
Which posts fit here?
Anything that is at least tangentially connected to the technology, social media platforms, informational technologies and tech policy.
Post guidelines
[Opinion] prefix
Opinion (op-ed) articles must use [Opinion] prefix before the title.
Rules
1. English only
Title and associated content has to be in English.
2. Use original link
Post URL should be the original link to the article (even if paywalled) and archived copies left in the body. It allows avoiding duplicate posts when cross-posting.
3. Respectful communication
All communication has to be respectful of differing opinions, viewpoints, and experiences.
4. Inclusivity
Everyone is welcome here regardless of age, body size, visible or invisible disability, ethnicity, sex characteristics, gender identity and expression, education, socio-economic status, nationality, personal appearance, race, caste, color, religion, or sexual identity and orientation.
5. Ad hominem attacks
Any kind of personal attacks are expressly forbidden. If you can't argue your position without attacking a person's character, you already lost the argument.
6. Off-topic tangents
Stay on topic. Keep it relevant.
7. Instance rules may apply
If something is not covered by community rules, but are against lemmy.zip instance rules, they will be enforced.
Companion communities
!globalnews@lemmy.zip
!interestingshare@lemmy.zip
Icon attribution | Banner attribution
If someone is interested in moderating this community, message @brikox@lemmy.zip.
view the rest of the comments
Oh, if they say so then it must be the true. Politicians would never hide their true intentions to make their policies more appealing.
If you want people to believe it's a different motive then provide some reason to believe that? Noone has.
There exists e.g. religious people who think porn is a sin. Saying you'd want to ban porn because it's a sin would alienate potential voters. Therefore, they can simply take the "think of the children!" position which is a classic approach and that sounds much more appealing while still restricting access for everyone (who wants their identity associated with their porn history? Data leaks happen all the time).
Similarly, (depending on political climate) far right politicians can't openly spout hate about foreigners since it would alienate some voters. Yet, time after time they're revealed to have been doing it e.g. when they thought they were anonymous.
Of course you can't know someone's true intention, but assuming that people won't lie and anything said by them is undoubtedly true unless somehow proven false is a bit naive.
Those people do exist, but almost none of them exist in the UK. So what reason do we have to believe that this applies to UK politicians?
Look at it this way: you yourself understand that "think of the children" is a popular (summary of a) position among the public. And you agree that "porn is a sin that must be banned" is an unpopular opinion.
So what reason do you have to think that MPs believe the unpopular opinion more than the popular one? MPs are people too. Unless you can find some mechanism by which MPs specifically are chosen for this highly unusual belief, or manipulated into believing it, this makes absolutely no sense.
Luckily no-one here is doing that. Do you understand the difference between "nobody ever lies" and "you need a reason to think that someone is lying"?
The idea that we should discard the perfectly plausible explanation of "MPs want to introduce age limits because of the reason that they state, which is a common opinion that many people agree with" and come up with some other, secret reason that they're lying about is conspiracy-theory thinking.
Russia says they're invading Ukraine to de-nazify them. With your logic, this reason is valid because they said so and being sceptical would be beliving in conspiary theories. Go on and continue to be an useful idiot for politicians.
You're not actually paying attention to what I'm writing. What part of "you need a reason to think that someone is lying" do you not understand, or not agree with? (I mean, if you did agree with it, you would describe your reasons for believing that UK MPs are lying in this case, right?)
With the invasion of Ukraine, you are trying to cheat, because the question there is not really about motivation but about the facts. The fact of the matter is that there aren't significant numbers of Nazis in Ukraine to "de-nazify" so whatever Russia's true motivation, its invasion is unjustified.
But I'm not disagreeing with you that the OSA is unjustified; I'm saying that the motivation isn't some insane religious conspiracy to ban porn. In comparison, Russia's motivation in Ukraine is to create a buffer zone with a puppet regime. We can see that this is the motivation, because that's what is consistent with their actions. Zelenskyy has offered to step down as part of a fair negotiated peace, so regime change cannot be Russia's motivation. Russia has suffered hundreds of thousands of casualties, so the protection of Russian-speakers cannot be Russia's motivation.
So we have ample reason to believe that Russia has a motivation other than what it states. Do you see how this works?
What reason is there to believe British MPs' motivations are what you say they are?