8 ms·

KidSwitch: Identifying Kids in Apps and Sites

42 points by tdaltonc 7y ago

tdaltonc 7y ago
The use-cases for this are obviously pretty wide. The really galling thing about this is that YouTube(Google(Alphabet)) didn't start offering this 3 years ago.
elagost 7y ago
It would be nice to see some technical documentation on exactly what's being looked at, but I doubt it's available given that it would just allow users to game the system.
morpheuskafka 7y ago
Accuracy stats? This seems like an anti-feature to me, and a little paradoxical to collect tons of data to exclude others from data selection. I'm sure it could work, but it seems like there could easily be a couple years standard deviation which would lead to many false positives.
- salutonmundo 7y ago
  It will probably be amusing to see the amount of decidedly non–kid friendly abuse hurled at this by adults who happen to like, say, watching toys being opened.
  - Mirioron 7y ago
    The most popular video on LinusTechTips is the unboxing of an RC fire truck. I think people do enjoy some toys being unboxed.
    - derefr 7y ago
      That sounds less like adult subscribers to the channel being really into that video, and more like tons of non-subscribers (i.e. kids) finding it by searching for toy unboxings and it happening to rank highly because of the relative popularity of the channel. So, not really an example of what "people" do.
  - Thorrez 7y ago
    > (gesture patterns, content interaction, hardware inputs etc) It doesn't sound like it takes into account which pieces of content you watch, just how you navigate the app. So I don't think watching toys being opened will cause you to be detected as a kid.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
wongarsu 7y ago
So children who want to use social features will have to browse more adult-like content to adjust the age estimate? I'm not so sure this will have the intended effect
- petepete 7y ago
  Nothing will stop driven teenagers. Nothing. The same way people of my generation had CD/DVD ROMs full of pirate games, software and pornography - teens today will find the path of least resistance.
idlewords 7y ago
This is creepy as hell, since you need a lot of surveillance on children to train this thing.
derefr 7y ago
I assume the implicit goal here isn't really "disabling features" like private messaging, but rather replacing age-gating in apps like Steam that stand between a non-logged-in user and the landing page for a rated-M game. (Or, maybe for the first time ever, actually effectively preventing a five-year-old from accessing a porn site just because the porn site doesn't want to be party to showing a five-year-old porn, rather than because the parents installed a content blocker.) But—possibly-dystopian question here—could this be used in the opposite direction? To keep adults out of safe-space-for-children communities (like the now-defunct Club Penguin)? "Prove you're not an adult" instead of "prove you're not a robot"?
- gizmo686 7y ago
  I can't imagine a usecase for such a feature. It would prevent parents from auditing the page.
  - derefr 7y ago
    It would be just as easy to allow adults only read-only access, without allowing them the ability to comment. This would solve e.g. the Elsagate thing. "YouTube Kids" video? Adults can't be creepy in the comments, because adults can't even post in the comments.
  - curryst 7y ago
    I think there are two use cases: the first is a naive "to prevent pedophiles from having access to children". If you don't think too critically about it, I can understand the enthusiasm for it. The second, and I think potentially more legitimate, is to offer children a space to socialize with their peers without having to worry about parental investigation. Whether or not you agree with the parenting style, it's an underserved market segment. A side benefit could be having your juvenile social media sealed somewhat like juvenile criminal records. Something like offering you the option when you turn 18 to delete your profile, or archive it with read-only access to those over 18. Legally, I think it would face troubles in some countries, but countries with laws granting more self-determination to minors might make it a useful environment for exploring ideas with your peers without constant fear that someone may now, or in the future, be offended by your teenage-angst fueled rants. I know I would have enjoyed that, I had a constant fear of retribution through highschool that prevented me from significantly engaging in social media. It wasn't particularly out of line, the usual "my parents suck, my school sucks, let me be a poorly adjusted adult right now!" kind of thing. But I also grew up during the start of the "social media is forever" age, where it started to be common for years-old social media posts by celebrities to become common. And the posts are always judged by today; not the person you were then, or the environment you were in. Frankly I still maintain very little social media presence. I would love to interact with people like that, but I also know that all it takes is one slip-up or vaguely phrased statement to sink you anymore. I like that this might be am opportunity to let kids be kids, and say the darndest thing; but still allow them to be full-fledged members of an online and in-person community without fear that their half-baked childhood ideas might ruin their future.
nydel 7y ago
>Historically the approach to this issue has been age-gating (asking a child to confirm they’re over 13), which makes everyone feel better but doesn’t actually solve the underlying problem. > >Today, we’re unveiling KidSwitch, a new piece of… Which underlying problem? I’m more interested in education & intelligence levels, iff* we’re to regulate content over web. E.G. you must be thiiisss smart &or demonstrate n% content comprehension to continue, return, reply etc. *iff as ‘if & only if’
- wisty 7y ago
  I think the underlying problem is that parents want the entire internet to babysit their kids for them. edit: Maybe what we need is a kids.txt to go along with robots.txt. Some file on websites with some kind list of what interactions a site has (can you leave a message, chat, access hardcore pornography, etc) so auto-blockers can block (or even just limit usage). So what if a site doesn't have a kids.txt? Block it I guess? Prompt to go into some special mode (no video, no posts, alert parents)? I guess sites lying might be an issue, then you'd either need whitelists or blacklists. Maybe tie compliance to whether the browser bar goes green.
  - kalleboo 7y ago
    This used to exist in browsers in the 90s. Site owners never bothered implementing it. https://www.w3.org/PICS/ https://www.w3.org/PICS/
    - wisty 7y ago
      Scanning it, it seems PICS specifies an rdf format that ratings agencies can use to define their own rating system, with self reporting (of various PICS implementations?) being an option for sites. I can imagine some site owners would find it a little hard to implement.
    - ars 7y ago
      It wasn't that owners never bothered implementing it, rather people were actively against it because they felt that no content should be filtered period, and never mind children. It was actively campaigned against to the point that if you did implement it you were criticized in public. So sites stopped using it and browsers stopped checking it. Some linkes: https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/cyber/digicom/121597digicom.html https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/cyber/di... https://www.nytimes.com/1998/01/19/business/technology-to-let-engineers-filter-the-web-and-judge-content.html https://www.nytimes.com/1998/01/19/business/technology-to-le... https://www.wired.com/1997/02/microsoft-employs-good-clean-pics/ https://www.wired.com/1997/02/microsoft-employs-good-clean-p...
nydel 7y ago
How could this avoid discrimination against atypical neurologies?
- mirimir 7y ago
  I'm not exactly sure what "atypical neurologies" includes. But I suspect that some of my personas would rate age~13.
SuperNinKenDo 7y ago
Beyond privacy implications, what are they doing to make sure those with physical differences such as disability aren't negatively effected?
- Freak_NL 7y ago
  This isn't the kind of technology that focusses on actually getting it right, this is a product meant to be sold to companies that need a way to off-load their legal responsibility of preventing children below a certain age from using certain features. This product ticks a box, it doesn't actually prevent children from using the features it acts as a barrier for. It probably works quite well in prepared demonstrations and with content that fits neatly in certain age groups. Those demonstrations won't include people with disabilities or quite mature children of course.
  - nulbyte 7y ago
    Speaking of legal responsibility, there is also a legal responsibility to not discriminate (even if inadvertantly) against the disabled. This seems like a pot of gold style quick fix, which is why I have strong reservations about its viability.
throwaway66666 7y ago
Why use Machine Learning to identify kids? Simply ask "Identify the Karate Kid actor" if they pick Jackie Chan over Pat Morita, you know they are a kid 100%.

42 points by tdaltonc 7y ago

The use-cases for this are obviously pretty wide. The really galling thing about this is that YouTube(Google(Alphabet)) didn't start offering this 3 years ago.

elagost 7y ago

It would be nice to see some technical documentation on exactly what's being looked at, but I doubt it's available given that it would just allow users to game the system.

morpheuskafka 7y ago

Accuracy stats? This seems like an anti-feature to me, and a little paradoxical to collect tons of data to exclude others from data selection. I'm sure it could work, but it seems like there could easily be a couple years standard deviation which would lead to many false positives.

salutonmundo 7y ago
It will probably be amusing to see the amount of decidedly non–kid friendly abuse hurled at this by adults who happen to like, say, watching toys being opened.
- Mirioron 7y ago
  The most popular video on LinusTechTips is the unboxing of an RC fire truck. I think people do enjoy some toys being unboxed.
  - derefr 7y ago
    That sounds less like adult subscribers to the channel being really into that video, and more like tons of non-subscribers (i.e. kids) finding it by searching for toy unboxings and it happening to rank highly because of the relative popularity of the channel. So, not really an example of what "people" do.
- Thorrez 7y ago
  > (gesture patterns, content interaction, hardware inputs etc) It doesn't sound like it takes into account which pieces of content you watch, just how you navigate the app. So I don't think watching toys being opened will cause you to be detected as a kid.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

wongarsu 7y ago

So children who want to use social features will have to browse more adult-like content to adjust the age estimate? I'm not so sure this will have the intended effect

petepete 7y ago
Nothing will stop driven teenagers. Nothing. The same way people of my generation had CD/DVD ROMs full of pirate games, software and pornography - teens today will find the path of least resistance.

idlewords 7y ago

This is creepy as hell, since you need a lot of surveillance on children to train this thing.

derefr 7y ago

I assume the implicit goal here isn't really "disabling features" like private messaging, but rather replacing age-gating in apps like Steam that stand between a non-logged-in user and the landing page for a rated-M game. (Or, maybe for the first time ever, actually effectively preventing a five-year-old from accessing a porn site just because the porn site doesn't want to be party to showing a five-year-old porn, rather than because the parents installed a content blocker.) But—possibly-dystopian question here—could this be used in the opposite direction? To keep adults out of safe-space-for-children communities (like the now-defunct Club Penguin)? "Prove you're not an adult" instead of "prove you're not a robot"?

gizmo686 7y ago
I can't imagine a usecase for such a feature. It would prevent parents from auditing the page.
- derefr 7y ago
  It would be just as easy to allow adults only read-only access, without allowing them the ability to comment. This would solve e.g. the Elsagate thing. "YouTube Kids" video? Adults can't be creepy in the comments, because adults can't even post in the comments.
- curryst 7y ago
  I think there are two use cases: the first is a naive "to prevent pedophiles from having access to children". If you don't think too critically about it, I can understand the enthusiasm for it. The second, and I think potentially more legitimate, is to offer children a space to socialize with their peers without having to worry about parental investigation. Whether or not you agree with the parenting style, it's an underserved market segment. A side benefit could be having your juvenile social media sealed somewhat like juvenile criminal records. Something like offering you the option when you turn 18 to delete your profile, or archive it with read-only access to those over 18. Legally, I think it would face troubles in some countries, but countries with laws granting more self-determination to minors might make it a useful environment for exploring ideas with your peers without constant fear that someone may now, or in the future, be offended by your teenage-angst fueled rants. I know I would have enjoyed that, I had a constant fear of retribution through highschool that prevented me from significantly engaging in social media. It wasn't particularly out of line, the usual "my parents suck, my school sucks, let me be a poorly adjusted adult right now!" kind of thing. But I also grew up during the start of the "social media is forever" age, where it started to be common for years-old social media posts by celebrities to become common. And the posts are always judged by today; not the person you were then, or the environment you were in. Frankly I still maintain very little social media presence. I would love to interact with people like that, but I also know that all it takes is one slip-up or vaguely phrased statement to sink you anymore. I like that this might be am opportunity to let kids be kids, and say the darndest thing; but still allow them to be full-fledged members of an online and in-person community without fear that their half-baked childhood ideas might ruin their future.

nydel 7y ago

>Historically the approach to this issue has been age-gating (asking a child to confirm they’re over 13), which makes everyone feel better but doesn’t actually solve the underlying problem. > >Today, we’re unveiling KidSwitch, a new piece of… Which underlying problem? I’m more interested in education & intelligence levels, iff* we’re to regulate content over web. E.G. you must be thiiisss smart &or demonstrate n% content comprehension to continue, return, reply etc. *iff as ‘if & only if’

wisty 7y ago
I think the underlying problem is that parents want the entire internet to babysit their kids for them. edit: Maybe what we need is a kids.txt to go along with robots.txt. Some file on websites with some kind list of what interactions a site has (can you leave a message, chat, access hardcore pornography, etc) so auto-blockers can block (or even just limit usage). So what if a site doesn't have a kids.txt? Block it I guess? Prompt to go into some special mode (no video, no posts, alert parents)? I guess sites lying might be an issue, then you'd either need whitelists or blacklists. Maybe tie compliance to whether the browser bar goes green.
- kalleboo 7y ago
  This used to exist in browsers in the 90s. Site owners never bothered implementing it. https://www.w3.org/PICS/ https://www.w3.org/PICS/
  - wisty 7y ago
    Scanning it, it seems PICS specifies an rdf format that ratings agencies can use to define their own rating system, with self reporting (of various PICS implementations?) being an option for sites. I can imagine some site owners would find it a little hard to implement.
  - ars 7y ago
    It wasn't that owners never bothered implementing it, rather people were actively against it because they felt that no content should be filtered period, and never mind children. It was actively campaigned against to the point that if you did implement it you were criticized in public. So sites stopped using it and browsers stopped checking it. Some linkes: https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/cyber/digicom/121597digicom.html https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/cyber/di... https://www.nytimes.com/1998/01/19/business/technology-to-let-engineers-filter-the-web-and-judge-content.html https://www.nytimes.com/1998/01/19/business/technology-to-le... https://www.wired.com/1997/02/microsoft-employs-good-clean-pics/ https://www.wired.com/1997/02/microsoft-employs-good-clean-p...

nydel 7y ago

How could this avoid discrimination against atypical neurologies?

mirimir 7y ago
I'm not exactly sure what "atypical neurologies" includes. But I suspect that some of my personas would rate age~13.

SuperNinKenDo 7y ago

Beyond privacy implications, what are they doing to make sure those with physical differences such as disability aren't negatively effected?

Freak_NL 7y ago
This isn't the kind of technology that focusses on actually getting it right, this is a product meant to be sold to companies that need a way to off-load their legal responsibility of preventing children below a certain age from using certain features. This product ticks a box, it doesn't actually prevent children from using the features it acts as a barrier for. It probably works quite well in prepared demonstrations and with content that fits neatly in certain age groups. Those demonstrations won't include people with disabilities or quite mature children of course.
- nulbyte 7y ago
  Speaking of legal responsibility, there is also a legal responsibility to not discriminate (even if inadvertantly) against the disabled. This seems like a pot of gold style quick fix, which is why I have strong reservations about its viability.

throwaway66666 7y ago

Why use Machine Learning to identify kids? Simply ask "Identify the Karate Kid actor" if they pick Jackie Chan over Pat Morita, you know they are a kid 100%.