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FTC suggests new rules to shift parents' burden of protecting kids to websites
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ksjskskskkk 3y agothis is part of the: passkeys as the ultimate centralized online identity plan.
- jeroenhd 3y agoHow do randomly generated cryptographic keys change anything? They're just usernames+passwords that you don't need to remember.
- walterbell 3y ago> that you don't need to remember On iOS, can pseudonymous passkeys be generated and entered by a password manager app, without being stored with the iCloud identity keychain?
- bonton89 3y agoAnd eventually, device attestation you cannot change.
- jeroenhd 3y agoYou can install several apps to use as passkeys, or use NFC keys, or Bluetooth keys, or WearAuthn on your Android smartwatch. If an app or website implements device attestation through passskeys, that's device attestation in the same way your house key is device attestation: you need the device to unlock the door.
- ksjskskskkk 3y agobecause in the very near future everywhere will only accept a couple issuers. not even paranoia, already happened once. just like oauth in the beginning and then everyone cried about how ugly their design was with "oauth nascar" and then only accept google or apple. it already happened once. today you can only login on saas with github (Microsoft). etc. this passkey push will boast openess, then on day one spam will take over and will serve as the excuse to limit to google or apple attestation only. as usual. and by then it will be too late because everyone was mislead by the initial promissed openess, and like you, might even have happily added it to your service, increasing the adoption momentum.
- SuperNinKenDo 3y agoThe title is poorly worded, which can be traced back to the FTC's owm wording as quoted in the article. It makes it sound like the FTC is trying to make websites responsible for things that would be parents' responsibility. But strictly speaking, it is literally correct, as it is shifting (much of) the _burden_ of doing so. The reforms actually mostly look really good to me.
- speff 3y agoUnsure why this comment was flagged. I took a look at the proposed changes in the press release and it seems like things HN would support. Is it because the rules are centered around kids? Yea I'd like the same rules applied to my demographic, but this seems like a good step forward.
- SuperNinKenDo 3y agoI don't understand either. I'd be happy for somebody to comment and point out something I've missed. But voting and flagging seems to pass for productive discourse here these days.
- adestefan 3y agoIt's the techno-liberatarian wing of HN that flares up on issues like this.
- newsclues 3y agoParents should be responsible for their kids, not websites.
- Mechanical9 3y agoI understand your perspective, but I'm going to disagree with what I think you mean, which is that /only/ parents should be responsible for their kids, and that nobody else should have to do anything at all for them. I know that's not exactly what you said, but given the context it's what I am going to argue against. Kids are a normal part of our society. We were all kids at one point. Our lives were all made better by reasonable accomodations that others made for our safety and wellbeing. If the outside world is only designed for adults, then there is an impossible burden on parents to raise children. I think we can and often do make reasonable accomodations for kids. Like checking IDs at the bar or checking heights before letting people on a rollercoaster. What that level of responsibility is for websites, I'm not sure. But it's not zero.
- thsksbd 3y agoWebsites aren't responsible for my kids. They should just provide a working mechanism for me to block them other than "I promise Im 18!". Currently it is impossible to safeguard the internet to kids once they know how to read and write. The privacy concern is BS. Your provider already knows everything you do online. The solution is easy too - sites add a blocking flag that the internet provider uses to block access to the content unless told otherwise by the subscriber. This has 0 privacy concerns. After all, despite https, Comcast knows what you are doing if you go to pornhub.com. And it costs nothing. A string with a magic number.
- whaleofatw2022 3y agoI do not know how you could think that. In a climate where people can't even get medications without getting judged, they'll be able to easily just call up their provider to unblock a website
- thsksbd 3y ago
- boomboomsubban 3y agoI wouldn't be surprised if there was some kind of trap that I'm missing, but my biggest complaint about most of these changes is that they only target children. I'm not overly bothered by the GDPR banners, so I favor opt in targeted ads. I dislike push notifications, though I'm not sure if they're something that should be banned in general. And an expiration on collected data sounds great
- jamesu 3y agoFeels like there has been a noticeable shift globally these past few years in favor of burdening websites to protect kids online. Makes me wonder: has the internet really gotten worse, or is something else going on here?
- treffer 3y agoYou can expect a kid to be online before they turn into teenager. At least to some extent. Moderation of that through parents is horrible (it's clise to surveillance / watch every step of your child). It's just that first consumption age went down and audience widened. Overall I think the internet has become safer, especially through the required handling of content complaints. It's just that the usage went into a direction that needs more safeguards.
- AlecSchueler 3y agoI'm surprised to see people speaking positively of safeguards here. Normally the HN line is that the onus fit these things should be entirely on the parents and it's an attack on freedom to have an hindrance to a child viewing and doing whatever they want online.
- xbmcuser 3y agoIt's make sense to me 20-30 years ago access to computers and internet was not easy so could be controlled a bit by parents. Today Parents can try to control their own childrens devices but reality is most children run circles around their parents when it comes to tech. Yes we the tech enthusiast might not be fooled by our children but not the case for the large portion of the population. Most of us don't like it or won't agree but the days of the internet being the wild west will slowly be over it will be converted to a regulated internet as the powers that be/people in power don't like it when they can't control.
- eganist 3y agoI'll reply with a bunch of anecdotes, so please bear with me. A few trends over the last two decades: * targeted monetization of everything under the sun * a total shift towards a subscription economy for nearly everything digital. * a near total shift towards mobile content consumption devices especially for younger consumers (tablets and phones) has likely resulted in the following: * low quality algorithmically driven junk food content (tiktok, instagram reels, the garbage people post to advice subreddits) * startups j-curving for usage and leaning into advertising as their only viable business case * Google scraping your inbox for ad keywords in the mid 2000s and beyond, Microsoft injecting ads into Windows 10 and 11, etc. Perhaps worse: * Generation Alpha and later Gen Z kids having relatively diminished technical literacy compared to elder Gen Z and Millenials (absolutely anecdotal. I'm citing three teacher friends frustrated that kids navigate their way around computers more poorly with each passing year) * subconscious mass influence of behavior patterns (foreign election interference, your trip to your local McDonald's, sneaker hype culture) Practically the only thing that hasn't actually gotten worse online, regardless of our own diverse opinions about it, is Wikipedia. It's a for-profit warzone of competing interests making competing edits, but it's an example of what can happen when the constant growth/profit/exit-motive isn't there. Many of the hobbyist sites running on sites like vbulletin or invision are gone; we use subreddits for those now. And people don't even bother with those, more and more people just post meme gifs in the comments of reels, sitting there scrolling through with their thumbs rather than contributing something new and unique.
- xtiansimon 3y agoSpecific protections mentioned by the author, “Among proposed rules…turn off targeted advertising by default… prohibit sending push notifications …Surveillance in schools would be further restricted, so that data is only collected for educational purposes […] stop companies from retaining children's data forever…” Ah. I want those protections too. Sheesh.
- xtiansimon 3y agoI heard on the radio an AP report of restrictions on the gaming industry in China, including incentivizing users to login to earn mana. China drafts new rules proposing restrictions on online gaming (December 22, 2023) https://apnews.com/article/china-tencent-netease-video-games-e9b0683ffb972744a5cf8574bff3e691 https://apnews.com/article/china-tencent-netease-video-games...
- ironSkillet 3y agoThe Chinese government rightly recognizes that these dark patterns are like crack for young underdeveloped minds.
- slig 3y agoThey absolutely understand and apply all of those patterns on the "west" version of their social network app.
- jqpabc123 3y agoAnother band-aid to cover up the real problem --- privacy invasion driven by personalized advertising. Just make personalized advertising illegal and this will become a non-issue. I know lots of people think they can't live without it --- but they are wrong. TV and radio existed and prospered for decades without it --- and the internet can too.
- adestefan 3y agoMeta and their lobbyists have been pounding advertising in the DC media market on TV, radio, and the Washington Post under all their brands about how they now support the government trying to mandate parents rights to limit access. First it was Instagram branded, but I've seen ads for their other brands lately as well. It started when the Surgeon General released the report on the effects of social media usage on adolescent health [0]. [0] https://www.hhs.gov/surgeongeneral/priorities/youth-mental-health/social-media/index.html https://www.hhs.gov/surgeongeneral/priorities/youth-mental-h...
- jqpabc123 3y agoMeta and their lobbyists have been pounding advertising in the DC media market on TV, radio, and the Washington Post under all their brands about how they now support the government trying to mandate parents rights to limit access. Yes. Ever wonder why? Because this will further destroy *all* privacy on the internet. The only way to prove you're not a kid is to fully identify yourself. The only alternative is to not use social media --- goodbye HN.
- webdoodle 3y agoAnonymity has only been a reality for IT experts and the rich that can afford to hire them since 9/11. Limiting social media and online activity will lower your exposure to privacy invasive techniques, but certainly not eliminate it. Take one trip on a bus, subway, or airline and you'll have dozens of smartphone camera's in your face, often times recording video/audio. The penetration of privacy invasive technology is so deep now that aside from hiding in the mountains or under a rock, it's nearly impossible to avoid. However, then your isolated. Whatever deviant ideology you felt needed to be protected by privacy laws, you've now effectively self-censored. Wikileaks founder, Julian Assange spoke about this over a decade ago. The fight isn't about privacy as much as it is about targeting people who's ideology is considered dangerous to the Billionaires.
- josefritz 3y agoStoring minors biometric data forever is pretty clearly evil. There really shouldn't be a debate here. Yet some businesses are out there monetizing evil.
- EPWN3D 3y agoHow would this even work? Web sites politely ask everyone if they're under 18 and then turn on these behaviors? Without some sort of strong notion of online identity, I just don't see how any of this is meaningfully implementable. And I really don't think anyone wants the equivalent of a driver license for using the Internet.