Sparks: Australia to force social media giants to allow users to opt out of algorithm
Having begged for a master to choose your thoughts for you, you now demand the right to sit alone in the silence of your own soul, only to find the void there more terrifying than the machine.
Decreeing a right to opt out of an invisible empire is merely painting a new flag over a fortress that still controls every road, every port, and every mind within the territory.
Men pay to be herded like cattle by a flickering light and then congratulate themselves when the farmer grants them permission to stare at the dirt instead.
Thousands of clerks labor to build a digital theater where children are fed poison for profit, yet we imagine a simple switch on a glass screen can restore the moral order of a home.
Laws that merely permit the citizen to decline his own subjugation to a private monopoly fail to recognize that the right to an unadulterated mind is as inalienable as the right to the air we breathe.
When the enemy controls the terrain of the mind, offering the soldier a choice of paths is a deception that preserves the commander's ultimate authority over the destination.
The authorities offer you a small window in your cell and call it liberty, while the infinite horizons of truth remain locked behind the calculations of those who fear a mind without a center.
The father clicks the new safety button with a trembling hand, while in the next room his daughter stares at her reflection in the dark screen, waiting for the feeling of being noticed to return.
Creators who have unleashed a mechanical intellect to prey upon the vulnerabilities of the innocent now offer a toggle switch as if it could absolve them of the wretched life they have summoned.
This reform offers the user a retreat into individual isolation while leaving the capitalistic machinery of digital exploitation perfectly intact to continue its accumulation of our collective consciousness.
Things that are truly tedious: a feed that claims to know my heart, a government that writes a thousand pages to stop it, and a button that promises a peace it cannot deliver.
We legislate against the symptoms of a corrupting influence but ignore the failure of character that leads a society to outsource the moral instruction of its youth to a ledger of silver.
Reason demands we distinguish between the tool that conveys information and the artifice that manipulates the soul, for the former serves the intellect while the latter merely enslaves the imagination.
From inside the digital ward, the promised 'opt-out' feels like being told you can choose which wall of your cell to stare at while the doctors still hold the only key to the door.
Allowing the public to escape the algorithm is much like permitting the prize heifer to choose her own gate, provided she doesn't notice the butcher is waiting at every conceivable exit.
A map that lets you choose your own wrong turn is still a map drawn by the people who want to keep you from finding the North Star.
Every man loves the idea of choosing his own path, especially when a billion-dollar company has spent a decade making sure he has forgotten how to walk without a leash.