[Ravus]

It's sadly an example of terrible leading question bias, to the point where I'm surprised that it even got a 22% oppose rate.

The percentages would change dramatically were one to write it as, "From everything you have seen and heard, do you support or oppose the recent rules requiring adults to upload their id or a face photo before accessing any website that allows user to user interaction?"

Both questions are factually accurate, but omit crucial aspects.

[Lerc]

I live in a country where 91.78% of the population voted for a referendum that bought back hard labour in prisons.

As one of the few who voted against it I have yet to encounter a single person who voted for it who both supports hard labour and realised that was in the question being asked.

[pnw]

Why do you claim the 1999 referendum reintroduced hard labor in NZ prisons? I've never seen anything to that effect. The reforms were related to bail, victims rights and parole.

[Lerc]

It did not reintroduce hard labour. People voted to reintroduce hard labour. The referendum was non binding,

[lazide]

Let me guess - ‘do you support violent prisoners being given work in proportion to their crimes’ or something similar?

[Lerc]

Oh far more deceptive than that.

"Should there be a reform of our justice system placing greater emphasis on the needs of victims, providing restitution and compensation for them and imposing minimum sentences and hard labour for all serious violent offenses?"

Now let's play tldr with the law!

Luckily it was non binding and stands forever as an argument against binding referendums.

[anigbrowl]

I'm not really seeing the deception here since it specifies hard labour and says it would apply to all serious violent offenses. How could you vote for this and not know you were voting for hard labour?

[NooneAtAll3]

I can easily point to deception in two words

1) Hard 2) Words

"Should there be a reform of our justice system" -> "should the law be passed"

"emphasis", "restitution", "compensation" -> too hard to skim, brain is bailing out

---

the only way to provide valid direct democracy is to provide more than enough explanations and rewordings from both sides of the debate *at the point of voting* to remove miscommunication

[anigbrowl]

I agree that it's unnecessarily wordy, but I still don't think it's deceptive. If your brain is bailing out that fast maybe it's better not to vote.

[account42]

The deception is that it combines two largely unrelated questions into one vote - leading with one that most will agree and followed by one that is more questionable. By the time people will be reading the second question they will already have be primed with an opinion on the first.

[Lerc]

I don't know how you could vote for it, I didn't and was astonished that people did.

On the other hand. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44870087

[anigbrowl]

I would probably not vote for it on principle, but my specific question was how the text as quoted could be considered deceptive.

[jacobolus]

People read "greater emphasis on the needs of victims" and stop processing afterwards.

[mvdtnz]

No, we didn't. We knew what we were voting for. And I'd vote the same way today.

[anigbrowl]

I don't buy that, and even if they did that doesn't make it deceptive. I'm not arguing in favor of this increased punishment, it just seems to me that its stated plainly enough you can't seriously argue that people were tricked.

[bee_rider]

It is somewhat deceptive, or at least misleading, to bundle up the concepts of giving the victims compensation, and punishing the prisoners more aggressively.

Unless the prison labor is providing the compensation, but that would be totally bizarre and dystopian, haha. Not really the sort of thing you’d see in a civilized country.

[tiltowait]

"Hard labour for all serious violent offenses" seems almost refreshingly straightforward. Was there more in the actual referendum that was hidden? I grant that "serious violent offenses" is somewhat vague; was it overly broad?

[sczi]

That question clearly says hard labour. I'm sure some people didn't read it, but I think there also may be another effect there, where when talking to people in person, they realize you are morally opposed to forced hard labour, and don't want to seem like a bad person, so they pretend they didn't know. Sort of similar to the recent effect in the US where trump significantly underpolled as many voted for him but don't want to admit it.

[account42]

Sounds more like an argument for requiring referendums to be about a single issue rather than bundling multiple ones into a single question.

[bcrosby95]

If a new law mentions victims I assume they're trying to appeal to my emotions. The joke is on them because I am a robot in skin form.

[lazide]

Yeah, there are many terrible legal abortions in California with the referendum setup too.

[scratcheee]

There’s a classic yes minister skit on how dubious polls can be: https://youtube.com/watch?v=ahgjEjJkZks&t=45s

[Iulioh]

"Do you want CHILDREN to be MURDERED by RAPEISTS online or are you a good person?

Y/N

[luqtas]

then proceeds to the tea break and brainstorms on how to empower the monarchy and conquer the world

[mcny]

No

[kieranmaine]

This doesn't quite cover what you're looking for but I think a previous survey led with a question that mentioned uploading ID - https://yougov.co.uk/topics/society/survey-results/daily/202....

I can't find the survey it's entirety, but I think the above question was followed by (this is based on the number at the end of the URL, which I'm guessing is quesiton order) - https://yougov.co.uk/topics/society/survey-results/daily/202...

[simonw]

Are there any credible surveys on this topic that don't use the term "pornographic websites" in the survey question?

[andai]

Yeah. It's the "foot in the door technique." The same is being done with Chat Control.

It's very difficult to oppose a law ostensibly designed to fight CSAM. But once the law passes, it'll be easily expanded to other things like scanning messages to prevent terrorism.

See also:

> Concern over mass migration is terrorist ideology, says Prevent

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/06/06/concern-over...

[nine_k]

The problem is that one of the most secure places in the world is a maximum security prison. Hence many measures that drag us closer to the prison state do genuinely improve security.

It takes some balls for the society to say: No, we don't agree to yield an essential liberty in exchange to actual real increase of security. Yes, we accept that sometimes bad people will do evil things, because the only way to prevent that would inflict even more damage on everyone. Yes, we are willing to risk harm to stay free.

There is always plenty of people who are ready to buy more comfort in exchange for limitations of liberty that, as they think, will not affect them, because they are honest, got nothing to hide, always follow the majority... until it does affect them, but it's too late.

[Ray20]

> It's very difficult to oppose a law ostensibly designed to fight CSAM. But once the law passes, it'll be easily expanded to other things like scanning messages to prevent terrorism.

Oh, look, you did it in literally two sentences. It turns out it's pretty easy to to oppose such law. Only there's simply no need to do it when you're the main beneficiary.