Yeah, I wish I could agree with the grandparent, but "child safety" is a very effective cheat code for bypassing reasoning because the harms (dead kid!) are imm

Yeah, I wish I could agree with the grandparent, but "child safety" is a very effective cheat code for bypassing reasoning because the harms (dead kid!) are immediate, concrete and visceral, while the benefits of not are way more abstract. How do you even begin to quantify the psychological impact of total surveillance? In such a liability-centric culture, it's easy to see why the cards fall as they do. I was listening to a 90s era George Carlin show on a long car ride recently and during a bit about the nation's budding obsession with child safety, he said something I found kinda poignant in the context of the ongoing youth mental health crisis (n.b. predates the pandemic by a lot): "we've sucked all the fun out of being a kid just to save a few thousand lives." Amid all the discussions of the apparent relationship between helicopter parents and neurotic, depressed kids, I think it's pretty reasonable to consider whether the sum total of "dangerous fun" deaths/ruined lives - lawn darts, pellet guns, fireworks, pedo van, tall swingsets, etc - exceeds the harm inflicted by that bubble-wrap outlook on life. I'd argue probably not. While reading tfa, I had the same thought regarding the company's claim of suicides prevented. Even if you take it at face value (which I don't; like, come on, there's no way they've demonstrated that with any degree of rigor), is the tradeoff worthwhile? I'd argue probably not, but don't know how to do that in a way that wouldn't get me called a monster at a school board meeting.