Warning: Incoming stream of consciousness that may trigger nostalgic vibes, joy, befuddlement and/or heartache.

The earliest days

It’s 1996. For the last little while I’ve been hearing an increasing buzz about this thing that has to do with connected computers or something. It’s a place you can chat with people, look up information, play games and more. I’m not sure exactly what it’s officially called, as it seems to go by many different names, including The ‘Net, The Internet, The World Wide Web, Cyber-something-or-other and The Information Superhighway. All I know is that it’s where more and more people are doing computer things and having a blast. The richer, cooler and more tech-savvy kids at school are already using it, and you better believe that the peer pressure is real.

One day when I’m sitting around doing eleven year-old things (likely playing my Sega MegaDrive, reading comic books or making uncoordinated attempts at painting Warhammer 40K minis) my mum walks into my room brandishing a CD and says something like, “if you take the rubbish out, you can use the Internet”.

You’ve never seen a chubby boy move so fast.

In fact, I distinctly remember throwing the door open and jumping from the top landing of our front-door area, and in a single bound, clearing a flight of nine stairs whilst holding a medium size garbage bag in one hand and the railing in the other. On the way back up I scaled those stairs at least three at a time.

Tangent: It’s important to note here that this could have been an even more memorable story, one in which I fell down those steps and ended up paralysed, or worse. See, the house I’m describing wasn’t fancy by any means – don’t let the staircase fool you. It was one of those cookie-cuter government-built houses designed to help the average Australian share in the dream of affording their own home. It was one of many that were mass-produced in the late 70s, maybe early 80s, and was as simple as it gets. You can still see some of these homes if you venture into the outer suburbs. A telltale sign is that most have a horizontal slab of concrete near the front door with circular cutouts that made for a fun climb as a kid, but these days most of them have been torn down to make way for newer houses and apartments.

Even though our house was modest, we grew up on a large plot of land (especially rare, in fact, considering our proximity to the city), and I’d spend countless hours playing in the backyard with our many dogs, weaving between the trees (a ‘forest’) and playing on the school-sized monkey bars that appeared one day during my childhood. Many years later I drove by and saw that almost all the houses in our court, also government-built, had been replaced with McMansions. And in place of our own stood at least three, double-story houses.

Update: I took a break from writing this and headed up north for a hike in the sun and to do some reading. On the drive back I realised I was only a few KM’s from my childhood home, and with this piece fresh in my mind I decided to swing by to take a look. To my surprise, there’s still about 30-40% of those government-built homes still standing across the immediate neighbourhood, many appearing frozen in time, whilst others have at least had a fresh coat of paint since 1996.

Though they were government-constructed, these ‘stock’ houses were built to last. My childhood home felt like it could survive a nuclear strike, with thick, concrete, sound-proof walls that were cold to the touch, and the whole thing sat up on wooden stilts, hence the stairs. You could get under the house, but it wasn’t like a traditional basement. More like a dirt and cobweb infested wasteland, enclosed by some wooden slats and accessible by a half-sized, single-bolted door. The stairs were, again, made of concrete and my mother (or the previous owner) had covered them in some sort of very fine, micro-pebble-like material, possibly for grip, or just for decoration. The texture was sandy-coloured, almost speckled, and had worn away as people trekked up and downs, coming loose underfoot very easily. She’d patch it up from time to time, but I can barely remember a period when those stairs were not in need of repair, either overdue for a patch-up, or requiring replacement of the thin, metal ‘grips’ that were affixed to the lip of each step, which would also come loose with wear.

I say all of this because traversing those stairs was a gamble, even at the best of times. And here’s me deciding to leap from the top step down to the bottom, with both my hands occupied, too. It’s at this point that I should mention something important; coordination didn’t come until later for me, and I’d suffer a fair amount of broken bones and damaged ligaments that persisted into my late teens. My temporary investment in the side-railing was also a high-stakes affair, as it could easily be wiggled from side to side without much force. There’s an alternate universe where in my over-zealous pursuit of the Internet, I suffer the same injury as my mother did years earlier; a broken back.

But, I digress.

How exactly was a CD-ROM going to provide me with access to the Internet? Well, that way it worked in those early days was that to get online you’d have to purchase ‘hours’ of internet access, either piecemeal or as part of a monthly plan. Yes, you read that correctly – hours. As it would happen, Australia was an afterthought when it came to the world-wide telecommunications network. This was due in part to our telecommunications infrastructure being either woefully outdated, or simply non-existent, impacting us both locally and in our efforts to link up to the world-wide internet ‘backbone’ (the series of core links that facilitated internetworking between nations). Combine these factors, and you end up with Internet Service Providers (ISP’s) who would only doll out a rather meagre amount of access per month, likely due to the high costs they were incurring because of the poor state of our telecoms stack. If I recall correctly, it was along the lines of 40 hours for $40AUD, or something like that. I’m sure there were plans for more, or less hours, and I even remember buying some sort of ‘booster pack’ at a news agency with my pocket money to squeeze out a bit more time that month. This timed access approach is something that the telco’s would do years later when the mobile internet became a thing here. You’d buy monthly ‘data packs’ that might cost you $2-$5, which afforded you unlimited access to a ‘topic’ (news, sports, comedy, etc), that you could browse on your phone’s 2 inch screen via the telco’s custom built web portal, whilst all other data outside of that would cost you per megabyte over your tiny monthly allowance (we’re talking 10MB here folks).

Back to the setup. There was obviously a modem in the mix, but my young mind didn’t yet comprehend what that was, or how it worked, aside from the fact that it needed to be plugged in and turned on. Oh, and that we had to be off of the phone when using it, as it would otherwise mess up the line and prevent a stable connection. More on that in a future installment.

I can’t recall if I helped my mother with the initial setup, or if I just watched as she completed it all herself. Over the years I’d forge a reputable career in IT, becoming the de facto ‘computer person’ (AKA: unpaid tech support) among friends and family, a role that I’m sure many of you who are reading this are all too familiar with. But back then I hadn’t yet shrugged off the reputation of ‘inquisitive child who does more harm than good with his bloody tinkering’, so I likely didn’t do much of it, if any. I earned that rep at the expense of several radios, headphones and other pieces of electronic equipment that I’d opened up with a screwdriver to ‘see how they worked’, without the foggiest idea of how to put them together again. This includes my mother’s parked car, and the internal wiring I decided to sever when she left me sitting unattended in it just a few years earlier. What can I say – Bond and MacGyver left a big impression on me. Fun fact: This happened on the corner of ‘James’ Parade. Coincidence? I’ll let you be the judge of that.

But back to the story at hand.

With the admin finalised, the rubbish taken out and my spine intact, the promise of ‘getting on the internet’ was finally about to be realised.

Beyond concrete walls

One of us likely pressed a ‘connect’ button on what was a Windows95 Network Connection applet. Maybe it was her, maybe she let me enjoy the fun of clicking the button to start that first internet session. Either way, it would be the first of countless times that I’d engage in that wonderful pre-show that let you know you were about to jump on the information superhighway.

It started with the audio of a telephone dial tone that unexpectedly arrived from your computer’s speakers (or ‘sound blasters’ as we called them back then). This was followed by the audio of numbers being dialed. Then a flurry of long and short flourishes that sounded like a cross between the electronic blips from an original GameBoy and a series of shrill, chiptune-like guitar solo’s. Then there was a high note that lingered for a while, before some alternating high and low notes, and finally a few blasts of hissing audio that increased in pitch and loudness, which, toward the end, began to resemble an error tone. It was that last part that always had you on the edge of your seat, not sure if you’d actually achieve a successful connection, or if it would fail this time.

I learned that if held down the spacebar it would quicken the little animation of the moving dots that travelled between the cartoon depiction of a globe and what was supposed to resemble our computer. In my mind it also made the connection ritual move along faster… but it probably did nothing, and was likely just a bug in the software.

What it sounded like to jump on the 'net over your phone line, back in the 90s.

And after that short, eclectic performance… you’d be connected to the Internet.

Needless to say I was instantly transfixed. Mesmerised even.

I felt like I could go anywhere, and do anything. Well, that is to say, anything within the confines of our 28kbps modem, 14inch screen and computer with a whopping 2MB of RAM. So, in retrospect, that ‘anything’ was actually limited to reading text, viewing pictures and maybe streaming some very low-quality multimedia. And as an avid reader, a general knowledge junkie, trivia buff and someone who loved to get lost in fictional universes, you can bet that I was in heaven.

In the next installment I’m going to continue the nostalgia trip, detailing what my early experiences were online. At this stage, I was still very smitten with the technology, still full of amazement at what this whole thing was, and feeling like the opportunities were only limited by the crude tech we hand on hand.

My journey had only just begun.

The post My evolving relationship with the Internet (Part 1) appeared first on A Modern Remedy.

Hey folks, welcome to the first of many monologues. I’m going to be experimenting with the sort of content I’m putting out through A Modern Remedy, and regular solo episodes are something I’ve wanted to do for a while. This will also be published as a written piece on the site, a modern remedy dot com, and I’ll eventually be putting this out as a newsletter as well. Consider these monologues as a companion piece to the New Ways pod, even if it’s actually the other way around. I’m also still playing around with how I’m going to structure these and my evolving setup. Right now, my process involves lengthy research around a central thesis, which I then format into a script of around 5,000 words that I’m currently reading from. I might eventually move to a more, dot-point, free-flowing video style, and save these longer reads for audio only, or something like that, but let’s see how this goes for now. And no, ‘AI’ was not used in any part of the process here, not research, not ‘brainstorming’, not anything. I prefer not to outsource my cognition, among my many other issues with generative ‘AI’, but that’s a tale for another day. These are my thoughts, and my analysis, powered by organic intelligence.

The plan with these is to do some deeper analysis on important happenings in the world, and what better way to kick things off than evaluating this brand-new law that has the power to reshape how millions, if not billions, use the internet.

We’re going to go into where this ban came from, what it’s trying to do, why that’s likely not going to work, the unintended (or perhaps intentional) side effects that aren’t being talked about, what governments should be doing instead, and if this social media ban could indeed kick off a ripple effect felt right around the world.

The background on this ban

Okay, so let’s break down what this ban is, how it’s being implemented, and what this means for users of the internet, both in Australia and around the world. Now, despite vocal public and industry criticism, the Australian federal government has decided to press ahead with a social media ban that was first introduced to parliament back in 2024, before passing both houses with a majority vote. This is actually an amendment to an existing law, the Online Safety Act of 2021, and is officially known as the Online Safety Amendment Act. The original Online Safety Act is aimed at limiting the creation and distribution of harmful content. That law was a reaction to the limited powers the eSafety Commission had to do, well anything, about the sites that were continuing to host video of the horrendous Christchurch mosque shootings, and was later presented as a way to also tackle online harassment and bullying. Now in effect, this “ban” means that from the 10th of December, 2025, as in, 48 hours ago, social media platforms that operate in Australia will have to take “reasonable steps to prevent Australians under the age of 16 from creating or keeping an account”.

Obviously, you might be wondering, well what sites are we talking about here? So far, that list includes Facebook, Instagram, Kick, Reddit, Snapchat, Threads, TikTok, Twitch, X/Twitter and YouTube. All the usual suspects, and a few others. At one point, that list also included Discord, GitHub, Pinterest, Steam and WhatsApp, which, could be best described as a chat app, a code repository, a picture saving app, a video game store and, well, another chat app. This ‘banned list’ was whittled down after initial concerns around the proposed law being seen as too wide reaching and too broad in scope, along with continuing criticism around privacy, but more on all that in a moment.

Australia’s social media ban has been positioned as a way to improve the mental health of young people by limiting their access to social media platforms at a formative and precarious age. And despite claiming to be a world-first ban, Australia is not alone in their efforts to put something like this into place. In fact, the United Kingdom beat them to the podium by nearly two years. The UK’s Online Safety Act was passed in October of 2023, and similarly focuses on preventing access to content deemed harmful to children. Just like Australia’s new law, it does so in part by imposing age verification requirements on sites and services that fall within scope.

Likewise, the United States has tried to pass similar legislation, most notedly the Kids Online Safety Act, also known as “KOSA”, which failed to pass in 2022 and again in 2024. In the case of this law, both sides of the aisle had significant concerns around censorship, constitutional violations and potential court challenges on a state-by-state basis. And censorship is of particular interest as we take a look at Australia’s social media ban.

This isn’t the first attempt at online censorship

The next logical question is, where did all of this start? Well, the origins of Australia’s ban date back to a time before the US and UK’s attempts to block social media. In fact, the Australian government has been trying to lock down the internet for some time. For those of you not living here, I’ll forgive you for not knowing about the 2008 internet censorship debacle that happened. In fact, let’s call it what it really was – a shit storm. Back then, the Labor Government, who was in power at the time, decided to support a radical idea by the new Minister for Telecommunication, Mr Stephen Conroy. His grand plan was to stop harmful content by imposing an internet filter, which would be implemented by Internet Service Providers, Australia-wide.

Yes, you heard me right – an internet filter.

I’m going to spare you all the details here, but needless to say, it was incredibly unpopular. The list of sites that would have been filtered grew to include anything that “offended against the standards of morality”. In fact, the proposed ‘black-list’ was leaked to the public, and it hilariously contained many websites that were anything but morally questionable, including several small businesses, such as a dentist’s office in Queensland. You can only imagine that potential damage and lost revenue they would have faced had they have been wiped from the internet back in 2008, let alone in 2025.

Unfortunately, Conroy doubled down, continuing to bark demands to the media in an attempt to fortify his position. Yet this ultimately proved to be his undoing, and he soon found internet activists creating websites that mocked him, and eventually, after mounting public pressure and stiff opposition from other political parties, Labor withdrew the widely unpopular policy.

That said, had the proposed internet filter actually gone through and become law, it would have set the framework for increased government censorship and tighter control of the internet in the years that followed. A social media ban would have been a fast follow, and much easier to pass through parliament, given the earlier precedent.

Now, technically speaking, the filter does live on, albeit on a much smaller scale. In 2015 the Australian government passed into law an amendment to the Copyright Act of 1968, which eventually led to Australian ISPs being mandated to block a handful of popular torrenting websites, on the grounds of illegal copyright infringement. Seems like a fair and reasonable thing, right? Again, let’s call it for what it is – this is a form of internet censorship, and any form of enforced censorship starts to become a slippery slope of what is and isn’t allowable, depending on who’s in government and what their motives and agendas are. Keep that in that back of your mind as we discuss this new social media ban.

Why you should be concerned

Now, I bet many of you are thinking, well, I’m not in Australia, or, even if I was, I’m not 16 so I have nothing to worry about.

And you’d be right… if you weren’t wrong.

See, the thing about a ban, is that it impacts everyone, not just those it explicitly targets, and that’s especially true when you consider the means by which this ban is being implemented and upheld. The politicians and media might be calling it ‘age verification’, but what they really mean to say is, ‘identity verification’. Because this isn’t just about verifying your age, it’s about verifying who the potentially infringing account belongs to, and that can mean… well, any number of things. Because, the government is leaving it up to the platforms themselves to decide how they will go about verifying people’s ages. For some, like Meta, owners of Facebook and Instagram, suspect accounts may be required to upload a copy of their government ID to a third-party in order to verify they are over 16. Others, like Snapchat, will utilise Connect ID, a service that connects with a user’s bank account for verification. Then there’s YouTube, who stated in a recent update that they will “determine a user’s age based on the age associated with their Google account and other signals and will continue to explore how we implement and apply appropriate age assurance.” Those other methods could include uploading a facial scan and/or analysis of user behaviour and account activity, at the discretion and interpretation of the platforms themselves. Funny how on one hand, the government doesn’t trust social media platforms to regulate themselves, and on the other, they are entrusting them to verify the age of their users and safely capture and store the personal data used in that process. And I could put together a whole separate episode about the well-known issues of accuracy surrounding facial scan technology, but all I’ll say on that is – there will be a lot of false positives and false negatives for people approaching, or just passing, that 16 year old age threshold.

And whilst this ban might in theory be targeted at under 16 year olds, it will only be effective if everyone is verified. And that’s one of the main issues.

Think about driving a car. Every “legal” driver has a government issued driver’s license. The authorities don’t just hunt around for people they think are under the legal age to drive a car – each and every person, regardless of age, upon request, must display their license.

Another example that we’ve seen happen here in Australia is scanning of your ID when entering a nightclub. It used to be that the door staff, bouncer, whoever, would check your ID if they felt your were underage, or to hit their verification quota for the evening. These days it is not uncommon for every single person in line to have both their ID and face scanned before they allowed entry. And for those of you rightfully asking about data security, don’t worry, we’ll be returning to that in a moment.

The point here, is that whether it’s today, or tomorrow, under these new laws, you are likely going to have to provide some form of personally identifiable information in order to use a large chunk of the internet.

And again, to my overseas friends, if you don’t think that your government won’t try this on, you are kidding yourselves. It’s already passed in the UK and Australia, Canada is talking about it, and whilst the US attempts are currently stalled at the federal level, many states have already started enacting ID verification for accessing websites that are ‘adult in nature’. I think you know what I’m talking about there.

Who are we giving our data to?

All of this begs even more questions. Like, who are we actually giving our personally identifiable data to? Which companies are involved here? Are they foreign or domestic? How long will they keep our data for? What (if any) security regulations must they comply to? And how are they protecting our data from being hacked and stolen?

Actually, let’s focus in on that last part. We’ve already talked about the fact that the processes involved in the collection and verification of our personal data will be handled in a mish-mash and non-uniform way by each of the platforms that fall under this ban, and it looks as though by passing the onus onto the platforms themselves, the government has absolved itself of any sort of uniform data privacy and security standard as it relates to this law.

Now, this introduces two big problems.

The first, and more obvious, is with the data stores, or where our personal data will be housed. You’d be fooling yourself if you think those data stores won’t soon become the number one target of malicious actors looking to get their hands on that highly valuable data in order to hack into bank accounts, access sensitive information or be sold to data brokers and online advertising companies. Sure, having these stores located all around the world does introduce a level of decentralised security, as in, there isn’t one big digital vault to crack, but it also introduces the issue of creating more and more attack vectors. It’s like building a house with lots of rooms and hundreds of windows. All it will take is for one of those windows to be left open, even just a tiny bit, and the resulting data leak will make Australia’s recent (and massive) theft of private health data and theft of telecommunications customer data seem trivial in comparison.

The second issue is around data collection. With so many people required to legitimately verify their identity, there are bound to be a few illegitimate players who come to the forefront as well. I myself have already seen ads for “quick, easy and accurate” age verification services popping up on Reddit and elsewhere. And that’s not factoring in those who are under 16 and are desperate to stay connected with their friends online through social media, who, desperate and emotionally charged, will likely fall for phishing scams that promise to help them get around the ban. To them, their whole online world has come crashing down, and they will likely do whatever it takes, ironically risking their own personal information, to remain using these platforms.

Cutting kids out of the internet is child abuse

This ban will ultimately do more harm than good. In fact, I’d argue that banning social media and cutting kids out of the internet is child abuse. Yeah, you heard me. I realise that’s a very heavy statement to make, so let’s break it down.

First off, for those of you over the age of 16, I want you to cast you mind back to what it was like to being a teenager. It was a confusing time. Your life was changing, your body was changing, you were trying to navigate school, trying to fit in, testing out different social groups, looking for acceptance, balancing new rules and new freedoms and all the while trying to discovery who you were in the hopes of carving out an authentic identity.

That’s a lot of shit to have going on.

Thankfully, you likely had a community or two to fall back on. To give you support. To face all these questions and tough challenges and to help you with the stuff that you couldn’t ask your teachers or wouldn’t want to ask your family. You bonded with them, shared similar interests and explored all the promise of the world you were inheriting from the previous generation. Now, I can only speak for my own experience here, but I imagine that growing up as a minority, or an LGBTQ youth, or someone that just feels like an outsider, that having the internet and being able to connect with likeminded people from across the world must seem like an absolute lifeline. It would allow you to connect with and form communities with people who you feel a sameness with, to help you through these formative years and feel less alone in the world.

And this is why I, and many others, strongly feel that this ban will hurt the people it is supposed to protect.

Kids, all kids, need to find community, connection. Cutting them off is not the way to do it.

And look, I get it. There will be those of you who know someone that was cyber-bullied, consumed some graphic content, fell into a pit of anxiety due to social comparison, struggled with depression brought on by lengthy screen time, or worse. Some of you might be able to point to someone who is no longer with us, and that is a terrible pain and a sadness that you may never fully overcome. I’ve unfortunately had some experience with this, and I truly empathise. That said, I know that a blanket ban will not solve this issue. Banning kids from using social media won’t prevent online harassment, as bullying will continue to exist as long as people exist. It won’t stop the flood of harmful, algorithmically recommend content designed to foster engagement at all costs. There are much more effective strategies that we could be employing here, and we’ll get into that in a moment. But I just wanted to take a second and acknowledge the friends, family, parents and loved one of young people that are doing it tough or who have gone through tough times, seemingly due to their use of the internet. You deserve solutions, just as our young children deserve a level of care and protection from the ills of society. But this social media ban isn’t how we are going to get there.

And what of those kids in remote and rural towns who are already living in socially isolated conditions? By restricting their access to these platforms, they will lose connection to their friends that they’ve made from across Australia and beyond. Does the Prime Minister expect that these kids will hop on train, a plane or take a five our car ride to hang out with the social groups they’ve already forged? Australia is a vast and remote country, with a large divide between the city, suburbs and country towns, and this ban will only further that divide for our young people.

The Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, in a recent media interview, proudly claimed that this ban will “save young lives”, and stated earlier that he felt this ban could help young kids, quote, “to spend more time on the footy field or the netball court than their spending on their phones”. Now, I agree in principle to see that second statement become a reality, but blocking young people from communicating online is not the way you get that to happen. And it certainly won’t save lives. In fact, by cutting off young people’s ability to connect with their friends and their communities, you actually put them in danger. Think of the young person who may be experiencing abuse at home, who doesn’t yet feel comfortable to ask their teachers for help, or who doesn’t know what to do or how to even start dealing with that situation. They often turn to the internet for advice. In fact, there are entire sub-Reddit’s dedicated to that, like r/WhatShouldIDo, with over 1.3 million members. Every other day there are questions from young teens, asking for help on relationships, abuse and serious life challenges. The sub’s community will respond, upvoting the most helpful reply, a reply that is usually grounded in logic and will direct the person to ways in which they can improve, address, or in some cases safely escape, their current situation. They offer resources, a kind word, and a much needed sense of safety and support.

So, thank goodness that Reddit is now on the banned list, or these kids might have received some life-saving advice!

Actually, thank goodness that Reddit, YouTube among other platforms, have stated that they are planning on fighting this ban.

Who is to blame here?

Look. It might be easy to come to the conclusion that the platforms are one of the victims of the ban. But that misses the point entirely. And I’m also not the biggest fan of social media platforms in general, but I’m less of a fan of government mandated censorship and attempts to inhibit people’s ability to interact with one another, regardless of age.

The main problem isn’t that children are running around cyberbullying each other every night after school. Nor is it that the parents of said children aren’t “doing their job” by actively monitoring them 24/7. The problem isn’t parents at all… it’s the platforms. Or rather, the inescapable and harmful algorithmic content on these platforms.

Remember the Kids Online Safety Act that we spoke about earlier? The one in the US that keeps failing to progress due to censorship complaints? Well, it might shock you to hear that there’s a part of that bill that I actually agree with.

One of the key requirements of KOSA is that platforms would have to provide kids with the ability to opt out of personalised algorithmic recommendations, as well as limit features that “increase, sustain or extend the use” of the platform, such as auto-playing videos, platform rewards and similar mechanics.

Basically, make the platforms less predatory to young people, and stop pushing sensational content.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the real solution. Or at least, part of it.

But, in order to make this actually work, and to avoid any of us having to fork over any more of our personal information, this needs to be enforced upon the platforms themselves, and not on their users. I’m talking about regulating the platforms, not just blocking access to them.

See, ever since the switch to algorithmically recommended content a few years ago, we’ve seen platforms prioritise and push the most sensational stuff one could imagine. Politically charged rhetoric, misinformation, disinformation, discriminatory discourse, hate speech, scammy products, conspiracy theories and the like. It’s amplified the bad actors and allowed dangerous voices to crowd out the experts. The uneducated and the grifters, joining an ever-growing chorus of content designed to grab your attention, keep you on the platform, scare you, and in some cases, make you part with your dollars in order to escape whatever “bad thing” these hucksters promote, which of course only they can help you with.

Then there are the other worrying effects of algorithmic-driven content that this ban was originally designed to curtail, such as the well documented negative impacts of platforms like Instagram, where young kids, young girls in particular, fall victim to extensive social comparison, leading to negative mental health outcomes, which are in some cases, fatal. Sure, in years gone by, when it was just you, seeing a feed of your friends and direct connections, one might get that pang of jealously when you’d see a picture or a video of one or two people on a picturesque holiday, or effortlessly rocking a six-pack, but it was equally easy to scroll past those images and filter them from your mind. Before algorithms, your feed was chronologically sorted, meaning you saw the most recent content first, and it was content of people you exclusively followed. But now, thanks to algorithms and a desire for these platforms to keep you hooked and fight for your precious attention, your feed will be flooded with content recommendations, from people or brands you don’t actively follow or even know. This is especially a problem if you engage with negative content. Linger a little too long on that holiday photo? Seems like that might be something you’re interested in, says the app. So here’s a hundred photos just like that. Enjoy!

Social media algorithms are going to keep on recommending things that you show an interest in, but also what it feels will keep you engaged with the platform you are on. After all, like any other business, these social media companies are trying to turn a profit, and they do by capturing your attention, growing their user base, and selling ads. Think of it like a car crash that you see on the highway. Chances are, if only for a second, you’ll sneak a look to see what’s going on there. It’s morbid, but it’s also part of our mental wiring. Somewhere deep inside our ancient lizard brain comes forth the instruction to gather whatever brief info we can on that potential source of danger. Now imagine if a social media algorithm was involved. It would notice you checking out that crash and say, hey, looks like you’re interested in car crashes. Well, here’s a bigger one. And you’d naturally look at that one. Great! Well, here’s an even bigger one. And a bigger one! How about a ten car pile-up? What about the most gruesome thing you can think about? You like that? Looks like you do!

Now, as someone who lives in a country with a huge culture of drink-driving and a very active and ongoing campaign against road fatalities, as well as having been in several car accidents, been thrown from a motorcycle, ran over by a bus and was in the middle of a three-car pile-up whilst on the way to a funeral, I am not in any way aiming to trivialise that issue. But rather, illustrate the point that social media algorithms can quickly warp an initial interest in a topic or piece of content by amplifying more and more extreme, controversial and emotionally charged content. And depending on the type of content, this can start to reframe how you see the world, shaping your sense of reality and altering how you act in society. You’ve only got to look at the polarised political climate in the US, that’s been widely fuelled by social media, and watch as this algorithmic experiment plays out in real-time.

And the proliferation of ‘AI’ slop on these platforms only accelerates the issue.

Hey, so… let’s do a fun little experiment just to prove the point. I want you to open up a browser on your computer or phone. Make sure it is InPrivate or Incognito mode. Go to YouTube, and if you aren’t already signed out, make sure to sign out of your account. Now, YouTube’s homepage should look rather blank. In fact, for me it says, “Try searching to get started. Start watching videos to help us build a feed of videos that you’ll love”.

Next, I want you to type in something wild into the search bar. It doesn’t have to be too batshit crazy to begin with. I’ve typed in ‘government conspiracies’. Then, I want you to click on the first three video results, one at a time, watching each for like 1 second, before backing out to the homepage and clicking on the next result. Do that three times.

After the third time, go back to the YouTube homepage by clicking or tapping on the YouTube logo.

Now, what does your homepage look like? You should have a page full of algorithmically recommended videos, despite only watching 3 seconds of content. I ran this test twice, from a blank homepage to one filled with videos, on a browser window on my PC as I wrote the script for this episode.

Here are the highlights from the home page, all of these video titles appeared within the first ten videos that were recommended, along with several ads, without scrolling further down the page.

The video titles I was recommended include:

• Every crazy conspiracy that turned out to be true, by a channel called “Trust me bro”
• 50 insane facts about the Nazi’s, with thumbnail depicting a carton Hitler, in full salute
• An ‘AI’-generated Hitler, in the style of a Pixar film, with the title, ‘Ranking best Sora ‘AI’ trailers #3’. That one has 1.8 million views, and showed up in both tests
• What the media has told us over the years – That has nearly 3 million views
• And, The creepiest internet mysteries that were finally solved. That one actually sounds interesting.

All of these videos had hundreds of thousands, if not millions of views. This is the content that YouTube thinks “I would love”. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Imagine I typed in something about losing weight, or vaccines, or politics. This is the problem that needs to be addressed. It’s not about blocking access to these platforms, it’s about the content that they promote.

I mean, we all know people who have lost themselves to bad takes that they first heard on social media. The cookers, the political-extremist nutjobs, the brain-rotted, doomscrolling plebs who have drunk the Kool-Aid and gone all in on hateful, misinformed, science-free “theories”. Events like COVID left a lot of people with too much time on their hands, leaving them vulnerable to falling down the brain-rot rabbit hole. And we’re talking about fully grown adults here who should definitely know better.

The other elephant in the room

An unfortunate, or possibly intended outcome of this ban is… control. Not just control over what kids see on the internet, but control over the internet itself. By blocking a big chunk of people from online discourse, you effectively silence their ability to participate in politics and activism. And then there are those who are going to refuse to verify themselves online, so count them out as well. And finally, if and when identity verification comes for us all, who will feel comfortable in voicing their opinions online, without the veil of anonymity? How long before online political discourse is deemed ‘morally harmful’, and added to a ban list?

And just taking a step back for a moment, does anyone else find it ironic that this ban kind of proves a point, unintentionally? As in, kids are taking to the internet to voice their concern that they will be silenced from online political discourse, and this ban, well, takes away their ability to participate in those political discussions. Through this ban, they lose a huge channel for political expression, for learning about and participating in political discourse, cutting them off from online political information and silencing their voices. This ban effectively renders them politically invisible.

Earlier I spoke of the concern around the wording of this social media ban, which drew criticism from security experts, privacy experts and government officials alike, due to how seemingly broad in scope it was, and you’ll be glad to know that it… still remains vague and wide-reaching.

For instance, a social media platform will be required to adhere to this ban if they meet the following conditions:

• if the, quote, sole purpose, or a significant purpose, of the service is to enable online social interaction between two or more end-users
• if the, quote, service allows end-users to link to, or interact with, some or all of the other end-users
• or, quote, the service allows end-users to post material on the service.

Sound like any sites you known of? Because to me that sounds like a lot of sites, if not a majority of the internet. I spoke about this exact issue, nearly a year ago on the New Ways end of year show. Even if a site, like Bluesky for example, with its near 40 million users, hasn’t made the first round of banned platforms, how long before it is deemed to fall in scope of this ban? Actually, I think Bluesky are prepared for that outcome, as hours before this law went into effect, the A Modern Remedy account on Bluesky was subject to age verification, all because I had set the ‘birthday’ of the account to be the day that we joined Bluesky.

As I said before, this is a very slippery slope.

Ultimately, the internet was designed to be a decentralised means of communication, owned by no one, a virtual land without borders. Open and free. And it should remain that way. Enforcing all of us to identify ourselves online removes the safety of anonymity. It prevents free speech. It limits the desire to learn, to satisfy curiosity, and to seek out like-minded communities.

Even though this analysis involves discussion of the government, I don’t intend for this to be about attacking any particular politically party or ideology, yet ironically, this ban may serve to harm the centre-left government that has brought it in. The Australian Labor party, the centre-left political party I’m referring to, have now presided over both the failed internet filter and this latest social media ban. Both are forms of digital censorship. What’s odd here is that left-leaning parties tend to skew younger, promote inclusive and open values, and draw support from an overall younger demographic. Yet it’s this very same demographic that is being targeted by this ban. It will be interesting to see how this plays out in the years to come and what impact it has on political preferences as these kids reach voting age.

What can we do about it?

So, what can be done about this ban? Well, for many of us, not much. I’ve already had my Bluesky and Spotify accounts, both of which are for business purposes, flagged for age verification. In both instances, I just had to update my age to match my own, instead of the date that I started AMR. You might be asking why I picked that date to begin with, and for me, it just felt more logical to represent the actual time that AMR had been in existence, that being a few years, instead of having an account that said it was decades old. Especially if that information was going to be public facing. So, far that’s all I’ve needed to do, but how long before another platform questions my age? And with this new law in place, there is nothing stopping them from requesting more personal information for verification.

Already there are reports that teens are employing various techniques to circumvent verification requests, including using alternative apps and VPNs. Now, I’m not going to outright suggest that you break the law, but as citizens in the US, UK and other countries have come to find out, there are very easy ways to get around the need to provide personal information to the government or a third-party in order to continue using these platforms.

However, that doesn’t mean these laws won’t have an impact in the short and long term. And there might actually be some good that comes out of this.

Firstly, the coming backlash to this could serve as a spark to help reignite the conversation around government censorship, but more importantly, questioning the increasingly powerful role that we’ve allowed big tech to play in our daily lives. This might also help to build a case against social media platforms that are driven by algorithmically recommended content.

And when this ban fails to make a real dent in mental health outcomes for our youth, we can start to shift the conversation to focus on what can actually help them, like taking steps to make these platforms safer, and prioritising the wellbeing of kids by making platforms more responsible for the content they allow, prioritise and promote.

Maybe then the government can a long overdue look into why so many young people are turning to ‘AI’ chat bots for companionship and mental health support, or what we are going to do about the incredibly pervasive online gambling ads, ads that also target young people, that are plastered all over the TV and internet.

Because, if we don’t send a clear signal to the governments that are enacting these bans that these are ineffective, unwanted and utterly obtuse, then they will continue to overreach, continue to censor and continue their march toward controlling the internet. Already the Australian Government is pressing ahead with new laws due to be enforced before the end of the year that will force search engines to apply similar verification methods, utilising photo ID checks, face scanning, or third-party verification methods for those looking to utilise the search services of Google and Microsoft. Combined with the social media ban, people here in Australia will start 2026 with will fewer digital rights and larger privacy concerns, all thanks to a misguided attempt at helping our most vulnerable citizens, the younger generation.

And for those of you thinking well, I’ll just use a VPN to get around these laws – think again. The US is already looking into ways that VPN traffic can be blocked from social media platforms, so as to close that workaround, and Australia isn’t far behind, with the eSafety Commissioner stating that they expect platforms will “stop users from using VPNs to pretend to be outside Australia”.

In the interim, I recommend you fight back. Support organisations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Digital Rights Watch and Fight For The Future, who are standing up for your right to a free, open and secure internet. One that is a force for good, not driven by profits and censorship. Spread awareness of the social media ban that’s happening here in Australia. Talk about it online. Read up on it. And for those of you in Australia, seriously reconsider voting for any political party that supports internet censorship.

So, in closing, this ban does little to address the real problems here. It targets children, instead of the multi-billion and multi-trillion dollar companies who profit off our attention through the use of algorithmically recommended content, content that is harmful not only to kids, but to the very fabric of society itself. This ban is an overreach, a violation of digital privacy and online freedoms, is potentially stifling to online discourse and may in fact accelerate the negative mental health outcomes that it is purported to curtail.

You shouldn’t have to have your face scanned to use the internet. You shouldn’t have to upload your government ID to chat with your friends. And you shouldn’t have to disclose sensitive personal information that may be easily stolen, leaked and misused… all just to watch a video online.

All the way back in 2024, months before this ban was formerly introduced to parliament, the Australian Prime Minister (or someone from his office) wrote a piece entitled, Blocking social media to the kids will save us all, when in actuality, this ban puts us all at risk. Our leading mental health organisations know it, as do local and international digital privacy organisations. And now, hopefully you do too. It’s time for the governments of the world to step up and take on Big Tech, that is, if they truly want to help protect not only our children, but the entire citizenry, from the harmful, hateful and horrendous algorithmically driven content. It’s time for regulation, for effective solutions, and not quick-fixes, or ineffective and overreaching censorship that misses the point entirely.

The post Australia’s Social Media Ban Impacts Everyone (Not Just Kids) appeared first on A Modern Remedy.

I want to do a little thought exercise here. Now, this is something that may only work for anyone in the age range of “young adult and above”, but kids feel free to play along. Cast your mind back a few years. How far? Let’s say 5-10 years. In fact, let’s make it a solid 10-year time trip. Do you remember where you were? What your life was like? What technology did you run with? What were your daily drivers?

Focus on some of those indispensable tools that you used. Could be your phone. An in-car GPS. Maybe a social network you checked far too often. A gadget, a gizmo, whatever. Just keep them in your mind for now. Now let’s go back another 10 years. Same deal as before, reflect on those items, those tools, those services, which were part of your everyday life. Got them in mind? Good.

Now, I want you to recall what it was like before you had those technologies. How much more frustration and friction did their absence bring to your daily lived experience. For me, not having GPS was a pain. I knew some set routes in the car pretty well, but as someone who is directionally challenged, even a slight deviation when looking for parking would wreck my ability to navigate back home. I’d end up driving in the wrong direction for lengthy amounts of time until I came across a road name I was familiar with, then I’d hop on to that and pray it intersected with another known road so that I could slowly get my bearings. All the lost time, wasted fuel, anxiety and frustration was only slightly offset by the fact that I learned maybe a handful of new routes during that period of my life.

GPS changed my life

When I got my hands on my first GPS system some twenty years ago, my life radically changed. I became more adventurous, more confident in my ability to chart a path. I slowly learned better routes, time-saving alternatives and would even mark out points of interest to come back to. I’d no longer need to pull over and thumb through the bulky Melways street directory that lived under my car seat. I discovered a sprawling and complex network of nature reserves, walking tracks and landmarks that I’ve frequently added to in the years since. And after a period of time I also learned to ween myself from any sort of overreliance on the GPS system, training myself to commit many of these routes to memory. Young me would be proud to see that sometimes I’d even unexpectantly notice a familiar road name during my travels, only this time there would be no anxiety associated with that discovery, instead replaced with subtle delight as I weaved together the road network in my mind.

Ironically, some of my proudest moments are when I’d hop into a car with someone and could confidently tell them we didn’t need to use their GPS, because I knew the way to our destination from memory. These days I no longer worry about how I am going to get somewhere or if I will get lost. Maybe that all sounds like a bland experience to you, but I am forever grateful for that technology.

Then there are other benefits that I also never considered, like being able to know the speed limit at all times – especially valuable when you are in unfamiliar territory. In fact, when I briefly lived in Sydney I would drive around with my GPS on at all times, because I had heard horror stories about how deceptive their roads could be (it’s true, the place is built like someone assembling the Mouse Trap board game minus the instruction manual). They would also sneakily place speed cameras not just at traffic lights and intersections, but in the middle of the road, tucked away around corners, hidden beneath underpasses and a bunch of other locations that you could easily miss. It always felt like a cheap and unfair revenue boost at the expense of inexperienced travellers, and less a way to enforce speed limits. With my solution in place, I’d smile each time the GPS would ding and alert me to a “speed point”, which ironically made me an even safer driver, as I would then reflexively check how fast I was traveling. Ninety percent of the time I was under the limit, but occasionally I’d be 2-5KM over. That’s enough for a several hundred dollar fine and a few demerit points, and you’d be talking to a wall if you attempted to plead your case that you just didn’t know any better at the time. Thanks to GPS, I never had to.

Have you been wowed lately?

Beyond GPS, there are plenty of other technologies I can think back to which truly improved my quality of life. The mobile phone, health-trackers, VoIP/video calls and much more. If you’ve played along, I am sure you would have a few in mind as well. But if we bring that timeframe forward, it feels as though there are less and less examples of life-enhancing technologies that can be pointed at. Instead, and I don’t think I’m along in saying this, the market has shifted to an endless parade of sequels attempting to recapture that initial magic. Thinking back to the GPS example, it went from a standalone unit you’d purchase, to being built into your vehicle’s dashboard, to being an app on your phone and integrated into wearable devices. Cool, but apart from the form factor, what else has changed? Traffic mapping, route planning, points of interest and speed trap detection have all been available since the early days, including my first GPS unit, a chunky handheld TomTom with a teeny 3-inch screen.

Little progression there. In fact, in some cases we’ve gone backwards. My Nokia e51 from the early 2000s had not only downloadable guidance voices including Yoda and a “surfer” character who would prank you by giving out the wrong directions (“wait… is it left, or right?”) and encouraging speeding (“dude, we’re entering the motorway, let’r rip bro!”), but also allowed you to record your own directions. A way to immortalise yourself, that is if you love the sound of your own voice. After experimenting with this feature, I concluded that I’d rather not take directions from myself.

Recently I was playing around with my modern-day Garmin GPS unit, and by accident triggered a developer mode, which opened up a slew of unforeseen options and hidden functionality, including its ability to track the path of the moon relative to satellite position, showing me the position of all nearby satellites in the closest cluster and a weird note-taking app where I could draw onscreen with my fingers. Strange, potentially useless, but it gave me that little twinge of excitement I used to feel, back when technological advancements seemed to mean something.

And that really sums up the first part of my thesis. Tech these days just feels like a cash grab, something intended to extract value from consumers instead of actually improving the quality of their lives.

Can you recall the last time a piece of technology truly made a difference in your day-to-day? I’m not talking about the LED strip you bought for your TV, a blue-backed phone that replaces a red-backed phone, purchasing a slightly faster computer or moving from a 26MP camera to a 26.1MP camera. Spec bumps and trivial objects are not what we are focusing on here. What’s something that you could not live without, or would significantly add frustration to your life should it be removed? What would you long for, if it was absent? And how long ago was it made, when was that technology made available to mass market consumers?

This is also a good exercise in reflecting on how much money we’ve collectively wasted thanks to marketing, FOMO and trying to fill voids through consumerism. And I don’t want to derail this piece by focusing on what happens to the tech we are needlessly replacing. That’s a story for another day.

Manufacturing a hit

So, with technological advancements slowing down and stagnation setting in, The Tech Profits™ realised that they were running and of problems to solve. That meant revenue would start to take a hit, if they themselves couldn’t find their next “hit”. And if they didn’t move quickly, the public might even realise that they would be just fine without the need to continually purchase the never-ending stream of shiny things they were being sold. Big Tech had already played their card in terms of focusing on shrinking form factors as their major strategy play… what was left?

Enter, Artificial “Intelligence”.

By applying this secret sauce to products and services, they could spice up anything! Heck, they could even re-sell the same old stuff, just by simply adding “AI” to the packaging. But let’s not stop there.

• Jack up the price? You bet!
• Paywalls and subscriptions? Let’s do it!
• Using “AI” as a catchall term to actually describe non-“AI” features? Why not!
• Stuffing products full of counterintuitive and inaccurate chatbots? Done!
• A vague promise of actually useful features? Coming soon!
• Auto-opt in and stealing user’s data for training and marketing purposes? Nice!

Alas, we find ourselves in the situation where companies are chasing their next big hit, and in doing so have been shoving their latest gimmicks (“AI” the prime example) into an increasing number of products and services, whether you like it or not.

Case in point – I opened up Notepad on my computer the other day to quickly edit a line of code and noticed there was now an “AI” CoPilot button. Why? What do I need that for? How do I opt out?

Apparently this functionality will help to re-compose the text you have written in a different tone and make your text shorter or longer if needed. Cool. First off, this is f*cking Notepad. I am not writing an epic tale here. And secondly, how am I meant to get better at writing if I outsource my cognition to this? No thanks. I’ve already blocked CoPilot at several levels of this OS, and now you’ve made me go ahead and uninstall Notepad. The more you push these unwanted features, the more I look to speed up my “transition to Linux and never look back” project that I have earmarked for later this year.

Okay, rant over. But probably not for long.

The real pain of it all is not the fact that, in my instance at least, I don’t like useless, environmentally destroying, unethical technologies being shoved down my throat to help line the pockets of Big Tech leaders. No, it’s that for many of us, we value our agency, talents, skills and love of the craft.

Now, I figure if you’ve made it this far in, you probably enjoy reading what I am putting out into the world, or at least this article. And truth be told, whilst I may not be the most skilled writer around, I actually really enjoy writing. I love learning new ways of expressing myself and slowly improving over time. But, I don’t get that way by “brainstorming via AI” or “AI prompts” or “AI re-writes” or anything like that. I use my brain. I flex that muscle and put it under tension. It improves as a result. You learn by doing, not by taking the easy way out.

I value teachers and learning opportunities more than ever-present assistants who will do your work at the click of a button. One helps you get better, the other helps you get sloppy.

In that same way, we are being told that “AI” is a godsend for everyone, when really, it’s likely being proclaimed as such by people who don’t value what it is attempting to automate. If you aren’t a creative, and not everyone is, then you likely don’t care to write, draw, make music, paint a picture or use your brain in that manner. Dynamic thinking and problem solving probably isn’t for you. And oh wow, gee wizz, now you can push a button and not have to think about doing that.

The problem(s) is that not everyone wants to devalue that experience. Not everyone wants the easy way out. Not everyone wants to rely on Big Tech for the answer to everything, forsaking their capacity to think, reason and create. And on top of that, you’re being told that this is the best solution for you, so you can get back to doing what matters… as long as that doesn’t involve monetising your skills, talents and effort. Big Tech isn’t relying on the slow-burn of “AI” to take hold, for grass-roots uptake to reach a critical mass and widespread adoption to occur. Instead, they are pushing this stuff on us at a relentless pace.

And that’s because they are betting on “AI” to be their next big hyper-growth market. They have no choice. Because they have nothing left to scale. Again, a story for another day.

Realise the play: they are trying to create synthetic adoption of a useless technology to line their pockets.

The good news is that the clock is ticking, and the winds of change are in full effect. Few, if any, of these “AI” companies are profitable. Each transaction, token and prompt costs the companies far more than they are raking in from subscriptions or other associated revenue streams, sometimes at a ratio of 3:1. And with each new model they announce, the compute costs and required resources continues to balloon, and without continuous fundraising many of the leading companies in this space would simply cease to exist. Oops.

You’re broken: The new grift

But, whilst we await this hype-bubble to inevitably pop, there is another sinister marketing push at work, designed to gaslight you into believing that you are fundamentally broken. I’m talking about the latest crop of “AI” products which are meant to provide solutions to those pesky human problems we all face. No, I’m not talking about something like navigation, but rather, your memory.

Products like Microsoft’s Recall, which aims to take continuous snapshots of your PC activity, index it, and then allow you to contextually review those snaps to find documents and other files through a timeline search, are nothing short of a privacy nightmare. So much so, they’ve already had to cancel their planned rollout of this feature at least once.

That’s fine, I hear you say, I don’t use Windows. Or, I do use Windows, but I’ll just opt-out and all is good in the world. Right?

…right?

Consider this. What if I am using Windows, and I have Recall enabled. And you and I are working on something together, a project that involves confidential information, private data, whatever. Now, let’s say you are on a Mac, or maybe using Linux, or otherwise don’t utilise or have access to this Recall feature. What happens when you send me that private data? What happens when you send an email to me, and I open it on my PC, which is screenshotting everything, at all times. What happens if someone get a hold of my machine, hacks it, or somehow compromises the integrity or security of it to some degree?

An even simpler example: What if we are on video call together? Hell… what if I view a picture of you on my computer?

Even though you may have opted to not use this feature, you are now subject to it.

All this because Microsoft believes we desperately need the capacity to remember everything, all of our computer-based activities, for future reference. That we can’t be trusted to rely on our own systems and processes, our own digital hygiene, and that they need to step in to “fix” this for us.

Then there are products like the Bee – a wearable device that records not only your voice, but the audio of your surrounding environment, to help summarise your daily goings on and act as a digital timeline of sorts. I recommend you read this hilarious and at times highly dystopian review of this useless product.

As you can imagine, the privacy violations are off the charts. And that was demonstrated by the reviewer who made a conscious effort to mitigate this issue. It’s easy to imagine that not everyone will adhere to that same level of care. It’s just like the Recall situation, but the potential privacy issues extend beyond your computer use. Someone could be recording your voice whilst you are sitting on a park bench, eating your lunch. What if you walk by someone who is actively recording, and blurt out some sensitive information? Where does that data go? How will it be used? And no, that isn’t a conspiracy theory or my imagination running wild. Selling a product like this for $50USD does make you question just how they will recoup the relatively low-cost of entry, especially when you consider they are producing actual hardware and ongoing software maintenance. It’s likely your data will be monetised in some way to offset that cost to the company.

And besides, do we actually need these sorts of products? Do we want to remember everything, at all times? Or pull up every single memory, in fine-grain detail, at the click of a button? That is, if these products do what they say, and don’t interject any false positives, which, going back to the Bee review, is very much the case.

Do you want to have a bunch of data stored on your PC from a former client who is no longer in your good graces? What about voice recordings of an ex-partner? Would either of them like you to have that information at hand, let alone on repeat? How can you hope to heal from any potential negative events or life outcomes if you can, at a moment’s notice, relive those experiences over and over again? Tom Cruise’s drug-addicted, trauma-replaying character in Minority report springs to mind. Or what about that Black Mirror episode where characters are driven to the brink of paranoia thanks to their always recording optical implants, leading to huge interpersonal conflicts as they overanalysed everything?

We are meant to forget. We are meant to get confused. We are meant to create.

And we are meant to learn from these experiences.

It’s time to tell companies that are trying to profit off your humanity to get lost.

Talking about something we shouldn’t forget, how about we shift our attention to the real issues we are facing, like climate change? Try putting your time, money and attention behind that. Because the upsides to solving that are endless. And no, I don’t need to ask ChatGPT for the answer to that one.

The post Stop trying to “solve” humanity. Focus on saving it appeared first on A Modern Remedy.

But before we kick off this new era, let me take a step back to provide some much-needed context.

The journey so far

For those of you who have been following AMR these last few years, you would have witnessed quite an evolution. What started as an editorial outlet morphed into an online store, before growing into a services business and then an audio show. Along the way there were also a bunch of backend changes as you can imagine, finding the right tools to accommodate this ever-shifting business. Then there were the platform migrations, where I felt like I was constantly on the hunt for not only the best-fit channel, but in a way, searching for an audience too.

That leads us to today, a near-complete reinvention of AMR.

After a long period of reflection, it became clear that trying to do it all under the one umbrella was too much of an ask. There was also the issue of thematic conflicts, mainly around the services that were on offer and how that was a one-way street, leaching away the credibility of my online writing. That isn’t to say that those services weren’t credible, but that they were in stark contrast to, dare I say it, the ‘thought leadership’ that I was becoming recognised for.

So, I decided to pair back what I was doing, return to my roots and embrace the gift I’d been given; forming semi-coherent sentences and providing dynamic perspectives that went against the norm.

But what of your services? Won’t someone think of the services!

Yes, I’m still in the services biz, only that has been rolled into a venture known as Good Gosh Media. It’s a company I’ve started with my business partner, Sam Hart (an amazing fellow whose show you should definitely check out). The mission is still the same, helping changemakers scale their positive impact. Only now, there is so much more we can achieve by combining our powers. We’ve already started collaborating with some big names and rising stars across some important industries, and we’re super excited at where this is headed, but I’ll save all that for a dedicated post in the future.

What’s in a name (and number)?

For those new around here A Modern Remedy, or AMR, is really just that – discussing innovative solutions to the challenging problems we face in everyday life. By being solution-focused I’m able to transcend any one particular industry and find the commonalities that are universal to people across all different sectors on a global scale.

I’ve interviewed people up and down the chain, from right around the world, to help tell their stories of change, share insights and amplify their voices in the hope of fostering community and maximising reach. I’ve also offered critical analysis and predictions on a range of topics including sustainability initiatives, technology, culture, policy, health and wellbeing efforts.

And as part of this re-launch I’m starting fresh, though I’ll be bringing my show, New Ways, along for the ride, and may also reach into the written archives if the mood strikes.

Four point, oh?

As the number implies, this is the fourth iteration of AMR. For whatever reason, I find it useful to use software version-numbering for each new update, perhaps as a continuation of my time in the tech industry. It’s also a bit easier to convey that this isn’t just a fresh coat of paint, but rather, some level of improvement from the past iteration. And that’s what I really aim for with each change, improvement, not just change for the sake of it.

For instance, unlike previous versions, this site is now run using 100% renewable energy. I’ve also implemented sweeping changes to the elements you see on screen (and many you don’t), through the adoption of sustainable user experience (SUX) principles, accessible colours and neuro-inclusive typography.

I’ve also completely switched up the backend infrastructure and the frameworks used, modernising the code and significantly reducing administration. All that adds up to a leaner, more integrated and streamlined experience for me, but also vast performance, functionality and accessibility improvements on the frontend too.

Organic Intelligence

For the record, I’m not a luddite. In fact, I’m what you might call a futurist and a techno-optimist. I honestly believe that technology can serve to improve our lives and help our planet… when put to good use. Unfortunately, the current state of affairs is really pushing my thesis to the point of breaking.

Without this becoming a long-winded diatribe on the ills of Big Tech, let me sum up my position (a direction which is increasingly gaining support beyond just those in the know). The true application and outcomes of current “artificial intelligence” products that are foisted upon us by mega-corporations (and your mate who has drunk the cool aid) doesn’t match the marketing hype. It is a mere illusion, a parlour trick that takes advantage of our inherent desire to put meaning to things. It’s auto-complete on steroids. A 3D, multi-modal V-Lookup operation or a semi-functional search interface that replaces blue links with text summaries. Take your pick as to which of those resonates with you.

This is not the utopian future we are being promised. And the only industry displacement that seems to be occurring is a transfer of capital from hardworking people into the bottomless pits of unsustainable “AI” companies. Every query you put to that lovely chatbot, every prompt, requires compute. Energy sucking compute. Compute that costs more to run than the money it makes from answering said query, at a factor of 3:1 in some instances. These companies survive via constant injections of capital paid for by suckers who are going along with the scam. That’s why they are shoving it into every application and making sure these useless features are ‘opt-in’ by default. Because they are running out of both time and resources, and increasingly need to have the numbers to point to when speaking to investors, the same mob who are beginning to wise up to the grift.

Now, all that is to say, I don’t use generative AI in anything that I do. I don’t use ChatGPT to provide me with writing prompts, or image generation, or to replicate my own voice. Instead, I do something that might shock and appall you.

I use my brain.

Wait, what? Yes, you heard me. I don’t outsource my cognition to a machine. I don’t let my skills or intellect atrophy by grasping at the low-hanging fruit of convenience. I’d also rather not rely on a system that is fundamentally probabilistic in nature and therefore prone to errors due to its very nature.

So, everything you see on here is independently researched, verified as best I can, and produced by me. My ideas, my authentic voice, all me. And if something is not created by moi, such as a third-party resource, reference or collaboration, then I will cite the source accordingly and give credit where it is due. It is very important to me that we honour human creativity and intellect, especially in this season of AI-hype. For when the bubble bursts and this version of “‘AI” becomes an endemic grift ala cryptocurrency, I definitely want to be on the right side of things.

That is my promise to you. That this is the genuine article. I will continue using organic intelligence, never opting to risk my reputation or quality of output by deferring to a wannabe deity and untrustworthy oracle.

Words and writing

As briefly mentioned, a big part of this update was the desire to return to long-form writing. But more than that, this also give me the opportunity to move into areas that I’d wanted to explore for a while. Namely, multimedia. I’ve recently wrapped season two of New Ways, and am about to launch into episode twenty-one with not only the standard audio treatment, but a full video release as well.

Yes, New Ways will be adding complete video episodes alongside our traditional audio episodes.

This is something I’ve wanted to do for a while, as there’s just a whole other element that is lost when recording in video only. Obviously, this is something that I will keep on doing, as I want to make sure this show is as accessible as possible, but now I can begin to explore this new medium too.

Alongside my articles and the show, I’m also re-launching the newsletter. This is something I’ve had a love-hate relationship with, less to do with the perceived hassle of producing worthy content but more related to the shifting platform challenge I mentioned earlier. That quest just confined to socials, but also a hunt for where I should host the newsletter itself. After going back and forth with Substack, I decided to self-host my publication as it didn’t make sense for my audience to be bouncing between platforms, plus after their content moderation fiasco I simply could no longer find myself aligned with their (lack of) values.

There won’t be any scammy ways to make you part with your email address (I take privacy extremely seriously), and I’m not about to try and faff about with monetising my audience. instead, I want to focus on delivering value and working out a cadence that is easily manageable and fits in with my workflow. Quality over quantity. Anything else wouldn’t be respectful, and if you’ve decided to invest your time reading my words then that’s the least I can do.

Just like the old days

Halloween’s kind of a special day for me, my favourite holiday in fact. It’s also the day I launched the original AMR, version 1.0, back on October 31st, 2021. Nearly three and half years later, I find myself launching v4.0 with seven new pieces of content, the exact same number as the first version had in total. And of that, you’ve got over 7,000 words across three articles to dig into, alongside several audio show episodes totalling around four hours to enjoy. Eat your heart out, streaming services!

Now look… I’ve been out of the writing game for a little bit as my business has transformed and grown to consume most of my free time, but it felt good to jump back into things and start using that muscle once more. I may not be on my absolute A-game, but this launch is a good measuring stick to see where I’m at and how I can improve. And as always, I welcome your feedback.

Plus, just like v1.0, we are launching with some areas of the site that are still in progress. I also expect that there will be some bugs, some kinks, some optimisations to be made. But that’s just it, this is my side-quest, a labour of love, something that I am going to let grow organically. Already I’m wanting to tweak a few areas, but I know that if I don’t hit publish now, I never will.

Perhaps AMR is a window into my thoughts, an analytical operating system, a platform from which to build positive impact.

All that is to say, this isn’t your average, static website. Watch this space. Things will continue to evolve and mature over time. And at some point, far into the future, when v5 is ready to drop, it will be fun to go back and re-read this post, to look back and see where things started, and where they ended up.

Bringing it home

The overarching premise, the theme of AMR 4.0, is ‘home’. The obvious representation of that is a new digital hub, a space to house all of the words, media and conversations, a flashy new roof to contain the goodness that is AMR. Perhaps AMR is a window into my thoughts, an analytical operating system, a platform from which to build positive impact.

But it’s more than that. It’s about returning to a familiar space, going back to my roots, re-exploring the origins of what AMR meant to me when I registered that business name back in 2021. I want to talk about solutions, for people and planet. I want to produce media that helps to make a positive impact. And I want to do all of that here, through this very website.

I hope you’ll join me on this next chapter.

The post Welcome to AMR 4.0 appeared first on A Modern Remedy.

When it comes to psychology and technology, I know just enough to be dangerous. I feel confident in my predictions and critical analysis, though I stop short of calling myself an expert. You see, I like to believe that my fifteen years in the tech industry, the qualifications I earned, the projects I led, the money I earned, shares I traded and the businesses I helped gives me some degree of insight within that sector. Likewise, my psychology degrees, authored thesis, trove of research papers I’ve read and reviewed, passion for science-based approaches and brief time in that industry affords me some level of, I don’t want to say authority, but maybe respect is the word I’m looking for here.

Knowledge is power

Putting all of that to the side for a moment, it is very, very easy to get high on one’s own sense of accomplishment, when the reality is that all of those achievements just buys you a ticket to the dance. The key ingredient is keeping up with the times, having a finger on the pulse, practicing critical thinking and always asking questions. What I’m saying is that you have to keep on learning and never lose that quest for knowledge. Otherwise, you’ll quickly turn into a “KnowItAll” who really doesn’t know jack about anything, clinging to old ideas and being passed by with regard to newer paradigms that just don’t fit into your closed model of the topic at hand.

(True) knowledge is power. And that cuts both ways.

On the flip side, you have the Average Joe, Jane or Jyx, who perhaps have only cursory knowledge of said topic, having been “self-schooled” through a few YouTube videos, social posts and clickbait-y shows of dubious quality and legitimacy. They don’t know what they don’t know and thus overestimate their understanding and mastery of said topic, feeling the need to weigh in and spout their limited and often inaccurate takes. Ironically, these folks are also able to be gamed rather easily, especially if you play to their perceived sense of authority and knowhow.

The Dunning-Kruger effect in, well, full effect.

Why am I saying this?

It’s not that you should by default listen to me, or that my experience and qualifications somehow makes me a de facto authority on these topics. As I jokingly mentioned at the outset, I know just enough to be dangerous. What sets me apart from the countless uninformed voices clogging up social media are my skills, experience, qualifications, applied critical thinking and out of the box perspectives. I couldn’t care less if what I say is counter to the popular narrative, I focus on finding innovative solutions that best serve people and the planet, unpicking the bullshit and highlighting the truth. And if you don’t like what I am saying, perhaps as some reactionary or impulsive stance to my analysis on subjects that might be near and dear to your heart, then I invite you to meditate on why I might be saying what I am saying, instead of instantly dismissing my statements. At the least, you will have some well-reasoned talking points should you wish to argue against my position.

But really, all of this just boils down to one thing; (true) knowledge is power. And that cuts both ways. If you have knowledge, you have power, but that power can also be abused, especially if, as the one with the knowledge, you know something isn’t true, and also know that most people won’t understand that fact. Call it manipulation, disinformation or propaganda. Another term for that, is “lying”.

Hello there traveller

Case in point, the hoopla around “Artificial Intelligence”. Now, you might be wondering why I put that in quotation marks. It’s because what is being described, the narrative being pushed, simply isn’t accurate. This is not true intelligence, and that is especially the case for this new generation of methods and models that fall underneath the catchall misnomer of “AI”. Again, I’m no expert in this field, but I have enough knowledge and experience at the intersection of technology and psychology to afford me a voice and an educated opinion.

Example time. The front-end “AI” chatbots that you interface with are built atop of large language models (LLMs) which are in turn built on stolen data and require incomprehensible amounts of environmentally damaging resources to run. Their party trick that laypeople and VCs alike continue to fall for, the one card they have up their sleave that makes things seem “magical”, is that they are essentially performing a three-dimensional V-Lookup operation on a huge dataset. Think autocomplete on steroids. It appears that this bot can reason, can come up with independent thought and has mastery of almost every topic under the sun. But unfortunately, it’s just an illusion. And one that can break pretty quickly if you understand where to look.

In reality, both the character and the actor were simply following a script. One was programmatic, one was narrative driven.

To put this into perspective, think back a few years to when roleplaying games made the jump to 3D, and non-player characters (NPCs) were given voice lines, circa the early to mid 2000s. Originally, these NPCs would say these lines only when you’d interact with them. And look, it felt pretty magical at the time. To hear a character speak to you, based on the dialogue you’d chosen, and then have them respond in kind was pretty neat. Very quickly, you’d find yourself ascribing personalities to these characters, based on how they would talk and interact with you. Though, that illusion would be shattered when you’d return back to them, only to hear the exact same greeting and lines of dialogue. The immersion would be killed. A stark reminder, in no uncertain terms, that you were simply playing a game. A crafted experience with limited options.

Game developers would take advantage of advancing technology and opt to record even more lines of dialogue, and in the case of RPG’s like Fallout 4, that number ended up in the hundreds of thousands. This helped somewhat, but it was still the case that sometimes you’d end up hearing the exact same responses, sort of like pushing zero on your dial pad to cycle back and re-hear those menu-tree options when you phone your bank. And despite the number of lines, these were all preset responses. There was no decision making at play here. At best, the voice actor put their skills to use to make it seem like their character was thinking, mulling things over, responding to you with joy, anger, happiness, etc. But in reality, both the character and the actor were simply following a script. One was programmatic, one was narrative driven. An immersive illusion.

Reverse engineering a lie

Which brings us to “Artificial Intelligence”. Let’s put all of this together and apply it to the hype-driven “AI” products that are currently being foisted upon us. First off, the people at the top of these companies, and by extension their marketing teams, have the knowledge that “AI” isn’t true intelligence. It can’t reason, it doesn’t understand what it is really saying. Just like the video game characters, it is following guidelines and scripts to produce requested output. That’s it.

But then why say that it is “Artificial Intelligence” to begin with? The answer is simple – money. Snakeoil didn’t sell because it worked, it sold due to the perception that it worked. And that perception was fostered due to hype, cheap tricks and charismatic salespeople (who’d desperately say anything to get a sale).

But before we get to the next layer, we need to unpack why this isn’t a true approximation of human intelligence. As someone who has poured over countless research papers and held discussions with mental health professionals across multiple contexts, including colleague, student and journalistic pursuits, I can tell you that the scientific consensus is that we… don’t fully understand how intelligence works with beyond the that it exists on different levels. Yes, there are linked components and rough metrics for what qualifies as intelligence, such as communication skills, memory, internal working spaces like the visuospatial sketchpad, logic, reasoning, consciousness and self-awareness, emotional processing, problem-solving and more. Those are just a few of our criterion for intelligence.

Now, how these concepts work, well, we don’t 100% know. Sure, we have greater insights thanks to advances in technology like fMRI, where we can see certain areas of the brain light up when we ask someone to think about rotating an object. We can also infer based on observational studies and self-report data, but we still don’t have absolute understanding of intelligence as a whole, which is why there are still countless teams and research centers right across the globe dedicated to the very study of this topic. Human intelligence is a frontier research area, one ripe with controversies and contentiousness. It is not a “solved” concept.

Yet here comes Big Tech claiming that it has given birth to “Artificial Intelligence”. No. At best, it can simulate, or rather, simulate a simulation of maybe one or two of those sub-facets, under very strict circumstances. That is not an admission that “AI” works, but rather that they have achieved an approximation of an approximation.

These models are fundamentally flawed, built as probabilistic answer machines, with paper-thin “personalities”.

All you have to do is look at the process to see how the illusion of “artificial intelligence” quickly breaks down. “AI” has fallible memory and can routinely forget who you are, or what you are talking about, after just a few sentences. “AI” will struggle to understand the nuances of different languages and unspoken contexts. “AI” will both claim to accept and refute its own existence when prompted. “AI” has no concept of true reasoning and cannot provide accurate conclusions through trial and error (see: glue on pizza). “AI” doesn’t actually engage in useful problem solving (again, see: glue on pizza), but instead will confidentially provide “answers” to questions based on the data it has ingested, unable to determine the accuracy or validity of its returned statements. I could go on.

“Artificial Intelligence” stans, those patient enough to have read through this article to this point, or who have perhaps just skipped to this section, will no doubt push back on what I’m saying with the rally cry of “yet”. We can likewise counter that with the fact that there is no day coming when these models will achieve true intelligence, so long as their current architecture remains the same. All we’ve seen, and are likely to continue to see, is more compute thrown at these models that are fundamentally flawed, built as probabilistic answer machines, with paper-thin “personalities”. When it comes to intelligence, they are fundamentally flawed due to their very design, which is based on probabilistic outcomes. They deal in guesswork, not true knowledge. No timeline or amount of investment will alter that outcome.

Exposing the scam

It’s no coincidence that Scam Altman™ and the other “AI” boosters are now starting to proclaim that they have “reasoning models” on the way. Yeah, okay bud. As it stands, these models seem to be perpetually in development, and you’ll also notice that there is an uncanny cadence to their progress announcements, which seem to fast follow any press which surfaces that is critical of their models and business practices. Watch for the next announcements or future-model PR deflections to directly address whatever major flaw punctures their marketing hype, those pesky flaws that lend further credibility to the objective reality that “AI” simply isn’t here.

“I asked ChatGPT” is the new “I Googled it”. And no, that is not a flattering statement.

That is, if these companies can even survive the next few years. Most of them are unprofitable, and require huge injections of capital just to keep running. And the more of you use their services, the more it costs to run. In a way, “AI” is eating itself. Yay?

In the meantime, we’ve got the wonderful second order effects of “AI” slop that is poisoning our social media, entertainment, news, politics and more. All those “deep” LinkedIn posts you see? There’s a reason they all sound the same right now. How to tell me you’re using “AI” to write for you without telling me that directly? Defend the use of the em dash, a common characteristic of “AI” generated output.

We also get to enjoy how much of a natural resource strain these “AI” models are creating due to their power hungry and inefficient processing power requirements. All of that, just to produce inaccurate, homogenous and rather useless output that only serves to both line the pockets of “AI” big wigs and dumb down the userbase thanks to the engendering of reliance at the cost of your own cognition and skills development. Me no think, me click. “I asked ChatGPT” is the new “I Googled it”. And no, that is not a flattering statement.

So, the next time you see a statement about “Artificial Intelligence” and how magical it is, especially if it comes from the company making said models, I invite you to employ some critical thinking. Is this really a simulation of human intelligence, a complex and multi-faceted collection of interconnect concepts that we admittedly don’t understand? Or is it someone who is asking you to believe their hype and pay them some money for the privilege of using their buggy software?

The post How can we hope to simulate what we don’t understand? appeared first on A Modern Remedy.