Jacqui Lambie has taken a swipe at global tech giants like Meta, calling them ‘bloody thugs’.
Appearing on the ABC’s Q&A program on Monday night, the outspoken Tasmanian senator blasted Meta and companies like it.
“They are bloody thugs,” Senator Lambie said.
‘They are like the banks. Let’s be honest, they have way too much power.
‘I have kids out there who are very addicted to this kind of stuff and it’s getting worse.
‘It must be shut down – the misinformation – especially when you see that there is going on around political elections, things like that.
‘This has to stop – these guys have to be fined or stand up to them and say get out.’
Jacqui Lambie has taken a swipe at global tech giants like Meta, calling them ‘bloody thugs’
Speaking about the effects of technology addiction among young people, Senator Lambie argued passionately for the need for intervention, saying schools needed to ban phones.
“It would give them a good eight hours off in the day, that would be a good start,” she said.
‘Parents out there are worried about alcohol and drug abuse … I tell you what, watch your kids with technology because they get addicted.
‘They stay up late at night, they don’t go to school.’
Senator Lambie said it was no different to people giving up drugs or alcohol.
“They put holes in walls, the same as drugs and alcohol, they beat their parents,” she said.
‘This is the addiction. This is technical dependency. This is real. That’s what it does to these young kids.’
Ed Husic, Minister of Industry and Science, said the world’s governments were taking the power of tech giants and artificial intelligence seriously.
“I went to this AI security summit in London back in November — 30 countries there,” he said.
‘It was the first time that countries had actually taken seriously the need to look at what needs to be done around artificial intelligence, particularly because not just because of the technology, but what it does in determining the wealth of companies and the influence of those companies as well.’
He said Meta was ‘effectively trying to hijack the situation around the news media’s negotiating code’.
Speaking about the effects of technology addiction among young people, Senator Lambie argued passionately for the need for intervention, saying schools needed to ban phones
Yanis Varoufakis, Greece’s former finance minister, said an abundance of technology was also causing the “death of the individual”.
“The algorithm itself is not the problem, but an algorithm that has been created to create hatred and addiction, that is a problem,” he said.
‘It’s a question of ownership – who owns the algorithm?
‘Looking at my daughter when she was 16, 17, I could see that subconsciously she and her friends were very worried about what they were uploading on TikTok, on Snapchat and all that, because they knew.
“Deep down subconsciously, that one day when they go for a job interview, a bot or maybe a person or someone who looks like a bot will interview them after checking their entire online history, so there’s no separation that we used to have between work and play, between messing around and making things that are going to haunt you during job interviews.
‘To me it’s just a machine that creates anxiety among young people about their future and that’s something we should tackle.’