Yeah, this is absolutely one post hoc interpretation of it. The black market for spirits absolutely pales in comparison to public health and legal data, which conclusively show that second order effects of drinking like liver disease, public intoxication, and domestic violence plummeted.

This prohibition era retcon is a way to justify the fact that people like to drink and there were many people who stood to make money on re-legalization.

Which is why I said the question of it being a good thing is different. I encourage you to look at the data, as someone who also enjoys to drink.

Government bans are surprisingly effective in most developed countries.

Each company was required to put a statement to the eSafety commission explaining why they should be exempt from the law, even GitHub. The eSafety commission also have an open monitoring period where they'll repeal the law if it isn't working as intended, and will release research.

I don't think it's just corruption, there are people who are trying to do the right thing, even if flawed.

Roblox AND DISCORD. Somehow YouTube is considered “dangerous” though.

Sure, except that for the most part conservatives seem to be happy to watch their rights slide right down a hill when conservatives are in charge. See the entirety of US politics at this point.

Society already puts limits on children's access to media, their access to addictive substances, advertising that's allowed to be shown to them, etc. The internet, and especially social media, is a gap in the existing limits. This isn't a slippery slope, it's adding a missing set of compliance.

Social media is: media, addictive, shows unregulated advertising to them, is psychologically harmful, and their algorithms have been radicalizing them.

Regulation is absolutely needed here. I'd rather see tight regulation, rather than being blocked completely, but social media companies have been highly resistant to that. For example, they shouldn't be allowed to show advertising, they shouldn't be able to do tracking, they shouldn't be allowed to have an algorithm led feed, notifications should be mostly off by default (and any notification that is shown to primarily exist to make you open the app should be disallowed).

The problem with changes like that is that they destroy the network's engagement and remove their profit, and for the most part, it's changes adults would like to see as well. Making those changes for some countries laws would push other countries to introduce similar laws and not limit them to children.

It's a bad point though, because those are fringe and don't have network effects that would pressure most children to join them. You become a social outcast if you don't participate in <popular social media of the day>, but the kids participating on fringe sites are likely already outcasts.

We should be aiming to remove purposely addictive things from our children's lives, and all currently popular social media platforms are addiction machines.