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I think the problem here is that it's legal to post content of minors without parental consent on the Internet, but more specifically on the major platforms tha

I think the problem here is that it's legal to post content of minors without parental consent on the Internet, but more specifically on the major platforms that minors use. When my child's daycare wants to work with the local university to do a behavioral study of toddlers, they ask for parental consent to film interactions. I can decline. Actively preventing disclosure without consent is beneath the major platforms; at best, it's a checkbox at sign up. What should the age limit be? COPPA says 13 but these platforms oppose, resist, or pay that lip service to that. > Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder and CEO of Facebook, has expressed opposition to COPPA and stated "That will be a fight we take on at some point. My philosophy is that for education you need to start at a really, really young age." [1] Maybe that age limit should be raised to 16, and maybe harsh GDPR-style privacy fines should be assessed against platforms that fail to prevent usages that violates COPPA. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_Online_Privacy_Protection_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_Online_Privacy_Pr...

mjevans 8y ago
The platforms can never read minds, and our court system isn't ready to actually process the results of something like... In order to use a platform you must agree to the conditions of use, which includes indemnifying the platform from harm (Blah blah)... making the parents liable for the child's actions on that platform. Which could also allow suit of and prosecution... In short making a mountain out of a molehill to try to make everyone better people. Though the real issue is that society wants to view the train-wreck, to have someone worse than the individual so that everyone else can be built up on the body of the scapegoat.
- politician 8y ago
  This isn't difficult or new. I was talking about scanning images that other people post of children and making sure those images have proper consent, and not the situation where children sign up in the first place. This is already done for adult content and copyright. It should be extended to protecting the privacy of minors.
akeck 8y ago
One approach would be to take the issue to individual school boards. I think it's probably initially easier to propagate prohibition of posting content of any current student as part of a school system's acceptable use policy to ever greater numbers of school systems than to go the law making route.
- mjevans 8y ago
  A better solution might be to not attempt to replicate the criminal justice system, but possibly to classify this more like a traffic infraction. Only there should never be a monetary cost, it should be a community service one for both the child and the parent.
olyjohn 8y ago
Maybe you're right about raising that age. A 13 year old could probably drive a car around town safely. Kids are capable of racing karts at high speeds and riding off road on dirt bikes. They are more than physically capable of operating a vehicle. We don't give them a driver's licenses, because we don't think they responsible enough. If they're not responsible enough to do something as simple as drive a car without crashing, maybe we shouldn't trust them to build vast social networks without parental oversight. The problem though, so many parents just turn on their own phones, so it would be another box to check on the sign-up form that gets ignored like a EULA.
t0astbread 8y ago
How would a service provider verify your age (without doing nasty things like forcing accounts to be linked to real identities)?
politician 8y ago
All of the replies to this thread focus on what the parents or children can do individually. That doesn't scale, the focus should be on regulating the major platforms. These platforms already have processes in place to automatically and manually scan for adult content and copyright. Google has image search. This should be extended to protecting the privacy of minors. "Is a child in this picture?" sounds like a classic computer vision problem.

mjevans 8y ago

The platforms can never read minds, and our court system isn't ready to actually process the results of something like... In order to use a platform you must agree to the conditions of use, which includes indemnifying the platform from harm (Blah blah)... making the parents liable for the child's actions on that platform. Which could also allow suit of and prosecution... In short making a mountain out of a molehill to try to make everyone better people. Though the real issue is that society wants to view the train-wreck, to have someone worse than the individual so that everyone else can be built up on the body of the scapegoat.

politician 8y ago
This isn't difficult or new. I was talking about scanning images that other people post of children and making sure those images have proper consent, and not the situation where children sign up in the first place. This is already done for adult content and copyright. It should be extended to protecting the privacy of minors.

akeck 8y ago

One approach would be to take the issue to individual school boards. I think it's probably initially easier to propagate prohibition of posting content of any current student as part of a school system's acceptable use policy to ever greater numbers of school systems than to go the law making route.

mjevans 8y ago
A better solution might be to not attempt to replicate the criminal justice system, but possibly to classify this more like a traffic infraction. Only there should never be a monetary cost, it should be a community service one for both the child and the parent.

olyjohn 8y ago

Maybe you're right about raising that age. A 13 year old could probably drive a car around town safely. Kids are capable of racing karts at high speeds and riding off road on dirt bikes. They are more than physically capable of operating a vehicle. We don't give them a driver's licenses, because we don't think they responsible enough. If they're not responsible enough to do something as simple as drive a car without crashing, maybe we shouldn't trust them to build vast social networks without parental oversight. The problem though, so many parents just turn on their own phones, so it would be another box to check on the sign-up form that gets ignored like a EULA.

t0astbread 8y ago

How would a service provider verify your age (without doing nasty things like forcing accounts to be linked to real identities)?

politician 8y ago

All of the replies to this thread focus on what the parents or children can do individually. That doesn't scale, the focus should be on regulating the major platforms. These platforms already have processes in place to automatically and manually scan for adult content and copyright. Google has image search. This should be extended to protecting the privacy of minors. "Is a child in this picture?" sounds like a classic computer vision problem.