11 ms·

There Is No Future for Online Safety Without Privacy and Security

99 points by abdelhousni 10mo ago

gjsman-1000 10mo ago
Let me be blunt with what I think happened here. For years, technical people insisted it was the parent’s job to monitor Internet safety. Parents, especially with the advent of social media, hardcore pornography, and every childhood friend having a device, correctly said this was unreasonable and impossible. Technical people had a chance for two decades to solve this problem on their terms. Instead we collectively decided that anyone articulating this point of view must be a morally panicked maniac, and that this is a problem with “no reasonable solutions” that we would tolerate. Now we don’t get to dictate the terms, because everyone has had enough, and nobody has patience left for kids watching BDSM on their friend’s phones at 12. Because of our industry’s refusal to take those concerns seriously, we lost our voice, we lost the grounds of sounding reasonable, and the floodgates are now open - for everything. Nobody is listening anymore to our point of view and arguably correctly so.
- akersten 10mo ago
  This frames the issue in a fundamentally incorrect way. Since the dawn of pseudoanonymous communication, politicians have been trying to get their nasty little claws into it. See Clipper Chip in the 90's. They've tried many avenues to deanonymize and centralize. Going after the parents is just their latest - they've discovered they could use convincing language like this to trick a bunch of people who previously had no reason to care about The Internet to now suddenly "realize" oh gosh it's scary out there, what can we do to help. Unfortunately their latest tactic is working. They figured out how to recruit a (possibly) well-intentioned bloc into supporting efforts that undermine privacy in an irreversible way. > Because of our industry’s refusal to take those concerns seriously, we lost our voice, Fighting against demands to censor, unmask, and neuter the closest thing we've got to a global platform of freedom is a valiant effort. Not entertaining these bureaucrats isn't some moral failing of our industry, in the same sense that ignoring a persistent busker on the street entitles him to your money after some uninvolved observer has arbitrarily decided he's made the same demand enough that somehow it's starting to make sense because the victim hasn't yelled at him with a good enough argument against it. In other words: yep, still the parents' job, yep, internet was still there when I grew up, yep, I turned out fine, yep, politicians have been trying to take away our privacy for 30 years (and unfortunately, they're finding more creative and convincing ways to disguise it). Hint: it's never about the kids
  - Nevermark 10mo ago
    > Hint: it's never about the kids Well yes it is. It is about both the cover problem (child safety), and the ulterior motive (surveillance, control). And not taking the reasonably concerning cover problem seriously, by finding sensible solutions, both leaves it festering unsolved in its own right, and growing in usefulness as a cover problem.
- lisbbb 10mo ago
  I guess, but there's a philosophy that goes something along the lines of: Government is not the answer to every problem. It's a very divisive issue, clearly. Technical people were never going to solve the problem of kids having access to adult materials online because tech people are only interested in making gobs of money, not in dealing with delicate social issues. Government isn't going to fix anything, either, mind you, because the moment the crackdowns begin, the technologists will walk right in with a solution. Maybe we'll finally have the distributed, peer-to-peer network we always thought we were getting but instead got centrally controlled nodes featuring mass surveillance. I stopped worrying about it as a parent. My kids want to look at porn? Let them. If they want to see horrible, violent shit that gives them nightmares and they can't un-see it, let them. They'll either figure it out or they will be lifetime children looking for big daddy government to solve all their stupid problems for them and society will collapse.
  - paulryanrogers 10mo ago
    Do you have kids? Do you give them unfiltered Internet access? Do you have any experience with PTSD caused by viewing the worst output of humanity?
    - blueflow 10mo ago
      I don't know whats more damaging - watching some beheading video when 12 or having controlling parents that do not leave you any autonomy even in the digital space. Personally i prefer the beheading video as its not far from whats already on TV.
- ToucanLoucan 10mo ago
  It's still moralist pearl-clutching in service of totalitarian horseshit no matter how you'd like to justify it. I don't even think you're strictly 100% incorrect here. That said, I refuse to entertain the "think of the children" horseshit when parents happily park their kid in front of an iPad for hours a day because it shuts them up, not with kink content they shouldn't see, but with AI/algorithmically generated garbage, or for that matter, human generated garbage, that rots their brains far more than any gimp costume ever could. For fucks sake, 12 kids in America die PER DAY due to mass shootings, and we can't even pass common sense gun regulations that the vast majority of gun owners are completely fine with. We don't give a fuck about our kids here. This has from jump, and continues to be, astro-turfed puritan whining not merely to pornography of whatever preferred kind of the moment, but to the existence of queer people as a whole. It IS parents' fucking responsibility, and maybe that is an onerous burden, but instead of even attempting to meet it, the majority of parents have abdicated it. And it isn't porn fucking their kids up, it's non-stop screen exposure leaving them with no attention span and no ability to simply BE BORED.
  - AlexandrB 10mo ago
    [flagged]
    - ToucanLoucan 10mo ago
      Fucking AI summaries. Correct you are, 12-per-day is the combo shot of all gun deaths in children in totality, which includes much more banal things like unsecured firearms in the home. That being said, my point remains: the #1 threat to children in this country is guns, wielded by classmates, road-ragers, gang members, or stored improperly. We still have no meaningful gun regulation in huge areas, and no public will to see it done. And this kind of insipid bullshit is what we're doing instead.
      - wakawaka28 10mo ago
        If you look it up, the most gun crimes occur in Democrat-run gun-grabber areas that have the most gun laws. Disarming people is an unacceptable solution for many reasons. It also doesn't work. The best solution to gun crime is to arm the law-abiding.
- godelski 10mo ago
  > watching BDSM on their friend’s phones at 12. Why does a 12 year old have a smartphone that's connected to the internet? When I was 12 our computer was in the living room and shared by everyone. It could access porn but you had to wait till you were the only one in the home. There's a pretty simple solution here if you don't already see it and I'm not sure why it isn't more acceptable. It solves all the problems you mention. You don't want kids being sucked into social media? Sucked into porn? Constantly staring at their screens? Have you ever considered not giving your kids smartphones? Or have you decided the benefits are worth the costs? Let's be honest here, even with strong government intervention this is always a cat and mouse game. The play of "no smartphone" is going to be far stronger than anything the government can ever do. Why is this not an option?
  - altairprime 10mo ago
    “No smartphone” is a boundary, and U.S. parents are often raised not to set boundaries under threat of mental, emotional, and/or physical abuse. So it makes perfect sense that we have now-parents completely unable to define and discuss boundaries with their children. Far better to capitulate in the face of an uncertain and not life-threatening risk than to allow their child to ever think that boundaries are healthy, etc. For the unfamiliar, here is a good starting point for understanding the generational cognitive dissonance in play: https://www.issendai.com/psychology/estrangement/contradictory-beliefs.html https://www.issendai.com/psychology/estrangement/contradicto...
    - j45 10mo ago
      It's starting to change in places, including in the US. The reality is it's not the smartphone, but the slot machine type software running on it. There's more than enough science that placing this kind of content in front of humans before their prefrontal cortex is fully formed at age 25-26 leads them to leaning on the pre-frontal context of the adults around them, and missing that, whatever they're spending the most time with that's then possibly raising them. Screens at lower resolutions and quality didn't seem to be as much of an issue compared to the hyper saturated motion with sound effects that are consciously chosen to keep eyeballs. Like anything, digital can be used for good, or bad, and in lieu of good, the other can to happen and become more of a default.
- iLoveOncall 10mo ago
  The reality is those parents have tried nothing and are all out of ideas, or, in the vast majority of cases, simply don't care. This is not at all about children by the way, because all millenials have grown while consuming porn and social media, and haven't turned into degenerates. It is 100% an excuse to spy on citizens, and nothing else.
  - j45 10mo ago
    I don't think it has much to do with caring. If it's simple to begin with doing this, or things to try specifically that can build any parents skills and competencies in this area, mind sharing that?
- zen928 10mo ago
  Treating users like adults and allowing them full control over setting system capability and app launch restrictions on devices (and even implementing fully optional, widely blocking restrictions as "parental safety options") was the industry taking it seriously. You considering the freedom of choice to the user as disastrous and the lack of heavily restricted lockdowns by default as "refusal to take concerns seriously" is just a reflection on your attitudes about other people, not any real argument for improving privacy or safety. You ARE a morally panicked maniac if your only grossly offensive things you want to keep pretending are horrifying examples have absolutely nothing to do with the invasion of privacy of children and more to do with puritanical outrage on children accessing adult material.
  - j45 10mo ago
    Except parents not being trained to really use it unless they look for it specifically.
    - pluralmonad 10mo ago
      Yes, a parents attention is a limited and valuable resource. It is a parents job to monitor the environment for dangers to their children. Not to neuter the entire adult world to make it pseudosafe for kids.
      - j45 10mo ago
        It's less about neutering, and more about diet. Junk food and processed sugar creates dietary based ADHD kids. One's information diet also changes how the brain develops, that's not a pseudo threat. I sense some trepidation around not having unfettered access to swim in the whole ocean as a child with more and more sharks and angel fish floating around. The environment to monitor is increasingly digital, not just in person. See my note above about parents who think their kids are safe at home, when they're letting the entire unfiltered world into their kids devices, eyes, minds without context.
  - Nevermark 10mo ago
    > implementing fully optional, widely blocking restrictions as "parental safety options") was the industry taking it seriously The myriad of settings, accessed differently on every site or service, that everyone needs to be aware of, and actively fight dysfunctional defaults and frequent "helpful" resets after updates, are not the solution parents or anyone else are looking for. Why are the defaults set to favor the company, in a way that makes them real customer/user-targeted security holes that people have to play endless wack-a-mole to secure themselves? That is industry taking plausible deniability and the monetizing potential of parasitical behavior at scale "seriously" indeed.
- ninkendo 10mo ago
  While we’re posting honest opinions that run against the consensus on this site: In my view, freedom of speech is a natural right that no government can take away. But no such guarantee exists that you can do so anonymously. Now before you immediately flame me to death, please read a bit further: We already have a hodgepodge of laws in basically every jurisdiction around logging IP addresses, cooperating with law enforcement when there’s a warrant, being able to track down who is (say) organizing violence, posting csam, etc. Like it or not, the government is entitled to search and seizure if there is a warrant signed by a judge to do so, and if you run an online service where can people can post things publicly, you better damn well keep logs of who’s posting things and you better cooperate if a law enforcement officer with a warrant asks you to. So what I propose is that we streamline all of this. At age 16 you get a digital ID that works something like a FIDO chip that can be used to prove your identity to a government authentication server. Sub in/out whatever tech you want, it can be a passkey (blech), something resembling a yubikey, etc. You get them at your local post office, where you can actually prove your identity in person. There’s post offices everywhere, and they’re already meant to serve everyone in the country. But critically, this key isn’t used to auth to any sites except a government-run signin service. The service itself would be a modified form of OAuth/OIDC that preserves privacy from the site you’re making an account on. They don’t know who you are, they just get a signed payload from the government signin site saying “this is a user over the age of 16”, and via a pre-established relationship between the website in question and the government auth site, a UUID is minted for that legal person. It will be the same UUID for that website for the same person, so you can’t just pretend you’re multiple people when you create multiple accounts. With this system, and using Reddit as an example site that may leverage this: - Reddit can’t know who you actually are, they only get a UUID and a signed payload indicating you’re over 16 (or whatever other set of properties are legally salient for the account.) In the event of a breach, all you’d get is a list of Reddit-specific UUID’s. You’d have to also hack the government auth service to know who these people actually are. - The government doesn’t know who owns your username on Reddit, they only know the list of citizens that have Reddit accounts at all. - In the event of a crime with a warrant, the government can compel Reddit to inform them which UUID corresponds to some account. Reddit continues to not know who the account belongs to. - Every site using this system gets a completely different UUID for the same legal person and has no ability to correlate them - Every legal person using this system has no idea what their UUID is for any site - Every site using this doesn’t have to worry at all about proving identity. They get working auth for every legal person in $country, streamlining signups and onboarding, and doesn’t have to worry about asking the user to prove they’re over 16. - You still get pseudo-anonymity in that you can use an alias (as many as the site allows, too), the site can remain blissfully ignorant as to who you really are, as well as everyone who reads your posts, etc. - The government can find out who owns an account, but only with a warrant. They don’t have a list of account/UUID mappings anywhere. This system is probably the most closely aligned to how I would do things if I was somehow “in charge”… you have a right to pseudo-anonymity, but you don’t have a right to cover your tracks so thoroughly that the government can’t track you down with a proper warrant. With such a system, saying “social media is for ages 16 and up” is a simple checkbox in the signup flow. Done. You can argue all day about whether a government should be able to uncloak your accounts with a warrant, but to me that question is already settled: yes, they absolutely can do that, they do so today all the time. Except today we have messy data breaches where everyone’s identity gets leaked because every site has to reinvent their own form of proving your legal identity (in the case of Facebook/etc) or simply proving you’re a certain age (uploading ID, etc.). I’d take a centralized government-run approach to what we have today any day. You could ask “but should government be in the business of electronic authentication and identity?” And my answer is: “YES.” It’s basically the primary function of a working government! We trust them to issue passports for chrissake. To me this is basic table stakes in the 21st century. If we did government all over again, having the government provide a service to prove online identity is basically right up there with “collects tax revenue.” Now, in the current government up to the challenge of doing this, and not fucking it up? Yeeesh, probably not. You got me there. But one can dream…
- sfRattan 10mo ago
  I remain sympathetic to parents who don't know where to start in terms of understanding technology and computers. It is a big topic. But I am entirely unsympathetic to parents who throw up their hands and make no effort. At this point, any parent saying, "I just don't understand technology," or, "I just don't have the time to mind my childrens' computer use or monitor their Internet access," is morally equivalent to saying, "I just don't understand traffic safety," and, "I just don't have the time to teach my children the rules of the road or how to cross the street," while living in a big, bustling city. It is lazy, entitled, and negligent. The world is full of networked computers and, barring some new massive Carrington event, is never going back to the way it was before.
  - j45 10mo ago
    Many parents think their kids are safe when they are inside the home, without realizing they are letting in the entire world, including things worse than they ever imagined into their homes, through the devices. In the past, the general disconnection of the world and information had a natural insulation factor. Probably less so today. Rather than admonish adults, it's actually quite common that many people in many professions don't know how to purchase, or implement software in their day to day work, let alone at home. Maybe, this is is an aspect of digital literacy that has been lacking - we know that the consumer habit loop that smartphones go after is not always about digital health, or the user's digital literacy, it's about capturing their attention. Parents actually seem to want the same kind of quality curation not just with the internet, but all areas of their children's lives. The free for all they may have grown up with 20-40 years ago is simply not the same any more online, or offline. In that way, even trying to make an effort sometimes isn't enough I'd say. Ignorance is one thing, but maybe it could seem like negligence to others. Would there be some possible solutions or approaches you or others could offer here to help parents build the skills that lead to not giving up? Sincerely curious where folks see the starting point of these skills.
    - sfRattan 10mo ago
      >Ignorance is one thing, but maybe it could seem like negligence to others. In person I've found the difference to be usually very clear. It's why I distinguish between the sympathic attitude of "I don't know where to start" and the contemptible reaction that "therefore I will act as if nothing is wrong, or write it off as someone else's fault." >Would there be some possible solutions or approaches you or others could offer here to help parents build the skills that lead to not giving up? Sincerely curious where folks see the starting point of these skills. It's a hard problem. I've spent a lot of time thinking about it, and almost as much time talking to relatives with children. I have come to no happy, easy answers. Carey Parker's Firewalls Don't Stop Dragons is a good starting point to Security and Privacy, but not really how computers work. There are various books I remember from childhood about how computers work, but I don't really remember the process of coming to understand computers distinctly because it was both early and continuous over a long period. I think the best we'll do as a species is one-to-three computer people per extended family. And I think the key will be teaching those people how to be of service to their families. But there's not really an existing framework for a "computer court wizard" in each family nor for what maxims and/or proscriptions such a person might teach computer illiterate family members in order to use computers safely and protect the family's children from the worst of dark algorithms, surveillance, and abuse/predators online. It's completely uncharted territory.
- Madmallard 10mo ago
  "because everyone has had enough, and nobody has patience left for kids watching BDSM on their friend’s phones at 12." Is that the reason? I really don't think so. I just think it's a power grab by the participants in government and tech companies.
  - Nevermark 10mo ago
    When people are operating at two levels, you can't leave either unaddressed. That plays into the hands of those using subterfuge. The power grab is riding on reasonable concerns about children. So its worth improving safety for children for two reasons: (1) reducing parents reasonable concerns and making parenting in the modern age a bit easier, and to (2) take that issue off the table (or meaningfully reduce the leverage it supplies), for the power grabbers. Ironically, the fact that the underhanded motives lie beneath a reasonable concern, makes solving the reasonable concern in a healthy way even more critical.
    - Madmallard 10mo ago
      Is it a reasonable concern? Parents are supposed to raise their children.
      - Nevermark 10mo ago
        > Is it a reasonable concern? Yes. > Parents are supposed to raise their children. Yes. Vapid questions and statements aside, ... Here is just one solution that helps parents, and respects everyone's privacy: Zero knowledge proofs. Which allow anyone who is verified by anyone already (i.e. credit card company, ...) to get a cryptographic key from that organization, that they can use to anonymously verifiably assert they are 18+ to sites, (1) without giving sites any other information, and (2) without their key source getting any information on what sites they visit.
- Bradsburied 10mo ago
  > Parents, especially with the advent of social media, hardcore pornography, and every childhood friend having a device, correctly said this was unreasonable and impossible. It is neither unreasonable or impossible. No need to hand the kids a device that can access the open internet. If parents do, restrict or deny gadget time. Stick to a Nintendo or console. Learned helplessness and codependency on internet is part of the sales pitch of big tech, salesmen in general. They push self doubt and sell their solution. Fill the time showing kids how to rotate tires and change oil. Show them how to make pizza crust. Learned helplessness is a feature of capitalism. Not immutable feature of physical existence.
- wizardforhire 10mo ago
  BDSM at twelve!?! Thats nothing compared to what we grew up with… just make it really really slow to download, being back the old internet!
- razakel 10mo ago
  It is not my job to parent your fucking child. You want to talk about responsibility? Take some.
tolerance 10mo ago
Before anyone who hasn’t read the actual link reacts to its current title and gets swept up by the single thread that’s dominated the entirety of this submission, it’s an interview. Alexander Linton of the Session Technology Foundation on building decentralized messaging and why platform-wide content moderation is impractical on encrypted platforms. Not familiar with him or the platform. But sounds like an interesting exchange.
kazinator 10mo ago
Today's FTFY: s/Privacy/Anonymity/ Make sure that it's impossible for my online actions to be traced to my identity, and then I don't need privacy, because there is no association that needs to be hidden and protected.
- baobun 10mo ago
  I see this distinction mentioned from time to time and it doesn't make sense to me. IMO, your actions not being tracable to your identity is privacy. In this framing, anonymity is part of privacy. You desire anonymity because of the privacy it gives you. Which is not to say that anonymity is always required for privacy though it tends to strengthen it. Similarly, sometimes people say there's a tradeoff between security and privacy, which doesn't make sense since privacy (confidentiality) is one dimension of information security. If you still disagree, could you attempt at defining privacy and anonymity and how you can prioritize meaningful anonymity without caring about privacy?
  - pluralmonad 10mo ago
    Probably a push back against the commercialization of the term privacy to now mean "we get your data and share it widely for money making purposes, but here are the terms so you have privacy."
    - peebee67 10mo ago
      "Privacy policy" is definitely one of the most prominent Newspeak terms around today. The full term should read "how we'll violate your privacy policy".
  - kazinator 10mo ago
    There are two sense of "privacy". Actual privacy, which of course is subsumed under anonymity, and the fake "privacy" that everyone is telling you they have a policy about and are assuring, while they track you and collect personal information.
    - 10mo ago
senorqa 10mo ago
I’m puzzled by the limited opposition from businesses regarding government attempts to access encrypted communications. Granting governments easy access—which inevitably leads to uncontrolled monitoring—compromises a company’s most valuable asset: its privacy. This would effectively hand over the keys to their operations, exposing them to security breaches, stifling growth potential, limiting access to competitive markets, and ultimately, jeopardizing company ownership. Corrupt officials could exploit this access to manipulate markets, facilitate insider trading, sabotage business plans, and even plant fabricated evidence within company communications and systems, leading to potential takeover and imprisonment of owners.
- teddyh 10mo ago
  In my experience, companies care about things that affect them but not their competitors. But government shenanigans tend to affect all companies equally, and so does not affect market share, and is therefore mostly ignored by companies.
ankit9571066 10mo ago
[dead]
Nevermark 10mo ago
As already posted in another comment: Here is just one solution that helps parents, and respects everyone's privacy: Zero knowledge proofs. Allow any organization that already legitimately verifies ages (i.e. credit card company, driver's license issuer, ...) to provide a cryptographic key to their clients, that they can use to anonymously verifiably assert they are 18+ to any adult sites they visit. This solution (1) gives sites no user information except 18+ verification, and (2) gives key providers no information about sites clients visit. This is what zero knowledge proofs are for. Everyone wins: • Parents jobs get easier. • Children are less likely to encounter adult material. • Everyone's privacy is protected. • Adult sites can verify 18+ ages, without driving users away. Not solving/mitigating endemic child access to adult sites is (1) a great disservice to parents and children, and (2) makes the success of draconian surveillance legislation MORE likely. (If you have a critique of this solution, please frame it as an issue to resolve, not a categorical swipe at crafting solutions. The cynical prevalence of the latter is so damaging to these debates.)
- ElectroBuffoon 10mo ago
  Or parents could set accounts to "child" and every service send the proper tags so the programs deny access locally. No third parties involved. PICS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platform_for_Internet_Content_Selection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platform_for_Internet_Content_... POWDER https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol_for_Web_Description_Resources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol_for_Web_Description_R... ASACP/RTA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_Sites_Advocating_Child_Protection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_Sites_Advocatin...
  - dormento 10mo ago
    Also known as "parenting". This would be solved long ago if it were not a politically charged topic. So much wasted time, it boggles the mind.
    - Nevermark 10mo ago
      I am having trouble understanding how anyone is unaware that children have pervasive and useful access to devices outside of their parent's sphere on a daily basis. Or why anyone would discourage use of cryptographically hard privacy protecting solutions. This is the perfect opportunity to take zero knowledge proofs mainstream, like end-to-end encryption, as a solution for myriads of current privacy leaking services and infrastructure. The alternative to cryptographically protected privacy, is sites increasingly collecting people's identifiable information and associating their identities with access/behavior logs. Information that can never be assumed to stay private.
Lapsa 10mo ago
reminder - there's tech out there capable of reading your mind. noninvasively and from afar
NoGravitas 10mo ago
I was two thirds of the way into the article before they revealed that this messenger is just a shitcoin vehicle.

99 points by abdelhousni 10mo ago

Let me be blunt with what I think happened here. For years, technical people insisted it was the parent’s job to monitor Internet safety. Parents, especially with the advent of social media, hardcore pornography, and every childhood friend having a device, correctly said this was unreasonable and impossible. Technical people had a chance for two decades to solve this problem on their terms. Instead we collectively decided that anyone articulating this point of view must be a morally panicked maniac, and that this is a problem with “no reasonable solutions” that we would tolerate. Now we don’t get to dictate the terms, because everyone has had enough, and nobody has patience left for kids watching BDSM on their friend’s phones at 12. Because of our industry’s refusal to take those concerns seriously, we lost our voice, we lost the grounds of sounding reasonable, and the floodgates are now open - for everything. Nobody is listening anymore to our point of view and arguably correctly so.

akersten 10mo ago
This frames the issue in a fundamentally incorrect way. Since the dawn of pseudoanonymous communication, politicians have been trying to get their nasty little claws into it. See Clipper Chip in the 90's. They've tried many avenues to deanonymize and centralize. Going after the parents is just their latest - they've discovered they could use convincing language like this to trick a bunch of people who previously had no reason to care about The Internet to now suddenly "realize" oh gosh it's scary out there, what can we do to help. Unfortunately their latest tactic is working. They figured out how to recruit a (possibly) well-intentioned bloc into supporting efforts that undermine privacy in an irreversible way. > Because of our industry’s refusal to take those concerns seriously, we lost our voice, Fighting against demands to censor, unmask, and neuter the closest thing we've got to a global platform of freedom is a valiant effort. Not entertaining these bureaucrats isn't some moral failing of our industry, in the same sense that ignoring a persistent busker on the street entitles him to your money after some uninvolved observer has arbitrarily decided he's made the same demand enough that somehow it's starting to make sense because the victim hasn't yelled at him with a good enough argument against it. In other words: yep, still the parents' job, yep, internet was still there when I grew up, yep, I turned out fine, yep, politicians have been trying to take away our privacy for 30 years (and unfortunately, they're finding more creative and convincing ways to disguise it). Hint: it's never about the kids
- Nevermark 10mo ago
  > Hint: it's never about the kids Well yes it is. It is about both the cover problem (child safety), and the ulterior motive (surveillance, control). And not taking the reasonably concerning cover problem seriously, by finding sensible solutions, both leaves it festering unsolved in its own right, and growing in usefulness as a cover problem.
lisbbb 10mo ago
I guess, but there's a philosophy that goes something along the lines of: Government is not the answer to every problem. It's a very divisive issue, clearly. Technical people were never going to solve the problem of kids having access to adult materials online because tech people are only interested in making gobs of money, not in dealing with delicate social issues. Government isn't going to fix anything, either, mind you, because the moment the crackdowns begin, the technologists will walk right in with a solution. Maybe we'll finally have the distributed, peer-to-peer network we always thought we were getting but instead got centrally controlled nodes featuring mass surveillance. I stopped worrying about it as a parent. My kids want to look at porn? Let them. If they want to see horrible, violent shit that gives them nightmares and they can't un-see it, let them. They'll either figure it out or they will be lifetime children looking for big daddy government to solve all their stupid problems for them and society will collapse.
- paulryanrogers 10mo ago
  Do you have kids? Do you give them unfiltered Internet access? Do you have any experience with PTSD caused by viewing the worst output of humanity?
  - blueflow 10mo ago
    I don't know whats more damaging - watching some beheading video when 12 or having controlling parents that do not leave you any autonomy even in the digital space. Personally i prefer the beheading video as its not far from whats already on TV.
ToucanLoucan 10mo ago
It's still moralist pearl-clutching in service of totalitarian horseshit no matter how you'd like to justify it. I don't even think you're strictly 100% incorrect here. That said, I refuse to entertain the "think of the children" horseshit when parents happily park their kid in front of an iPad for hours a day because it shuts them up, not with kink content they shouldn't see, but with AI/algorithmically generated garbage, or for that matter, human generated garbage, that rots their brains far more than any gimp costume ever could. For fucks sake, 12 kids in America die PER DAY due to mass shootings, and we can't even pass common sense gun regulations that the vast majority of gun owners are completely fine with. We don't give a fuck about our kids here. This has from jump, and continues to be, astro-turfed puritan whining not merely to pornography of whatever preferred kind of the moment, but to the existence of queer people as a whole. It IS parents' fucking responsibility, and maybe that is an onerous burden, but instead of even attempting to meet it, the majority of parents have abdicated it. And it isn't porn fucking their kids up, it's non-stop screen exposure leaving them with no attention span and no ability to simply BE BORED.
- AlexandrB 10mo ago
  [flagged]
  - ToucanLoucan 10mo ago
    Fucking AI summaries. Correct you are, 12-per-day is the combo shot of all gun deaths in children in totality, which includes much more banal things like unsecured firearms in the home. That being said, my point remains: the #1 threat to children in this country is guns, wielded by classmates, road-ragers, gang members, or stored improperly. We still have no meaningful gun regulation in huge areas, and no public will to see it done. And this kind of insipid bullshit is what we're doing instead.
    - wakawaka28 10mo ago
      If you look it up, the most gun crimes occur in Democrat-run gun-grabber areas that have the most gun laws. Disarming people is an unacceptable solution for many reasons. It also doesn't work. The best solution to gun crime is to arm the law-abiding.
godelski 10mo ago
> watching BDSM on their friend’s phones at 12. Why does a 12 year old have a smartphone that's connected to the internet? When I was 12 our computer was in the living room and shared by everyone. It could access porn but you had to wait till you were the only one in the home. There's a pretty simple solution here if you don't already see it and I'm not sure why it isn't more acceptable. It solves all the problems you mention. You don't want kids being sucked into social media? Sucked into porn? Constantly staring at their screens? Have you ever considered not giving your kids smartphones? Or have you decided the benefits are worth the costs? Let's be honest here, even with strong government intervention this is always a cat and mouse game. The play of "no smartphone" is going to be far stronger than anything the government can ever do. Why is this not an option?
- altairprime 10mo ago
  “No smartphone” is a boundary, and U.S. parents are often raised not to set boundaries under threat of mental, emotional, and/or physical abuse. So it makes perfect sense that we have now-parents completely unable to define and discuss boundaries with their children. Far better to capitulate in the face of an uncertain and not life-threatening risk than to allow their child to ever think that boundaries are healthy, etc. For the unfamiliar, here is a good starting point for understanding the generational cognitive dissonance in play: https://www.issendai.com/psychology/estrangement/contradictory-beliefs.html https://www.issendai.com/psychology/estrangement/contradicto...
  - j45 10mo ago
    It's starting to change in places, including in the US. The reality is it's not the smartphone, but the slot machine type software running on it. There's more than enough science that placing this kind of content in front of humans before their prefrontal cortex is fully formed at age 25-26 leads them to leaning on the pre-frontal context of the adults around them, and missing that, whatever they're spending the most time with that's then possibly raising them. Screens at lower resolutions and quality didn't seem to be as much of an issue compared to the hyper saturated motion with sound effects that are consciously chosen to keep eyeballs. Like anything, digital can be used for good, or bad, and in lieu of good, the other can to happen and become more of a default.
iLoveOncall 10mo ago
The reality is those parents have tried nothing and are all out of ideas, or, in the vast majority of cases, simply don't care. This is not at all about children by the way, because all millenials have grown while consuming porn and social media, and haven't turned into degenerates. It is 100% an excuse to spy on citizens, and nothing else.
- j45 10mo ago
  I don't think it has much to do with caring. If it's simple to begin with doing this, or things to try specifically that can build any parents skills and competencies in this area, mind sharing that?
zen928 10mo ago
Treating users like adults and allowing them full control over setting system capability and app launch restrictions on devices (and even implementing fully optional, widely blocking restrictions as "parental safety options") was the industry taking it seriously. You considering the freedom of choice to the user as disastrous and the lack of heavily restricted lockdowns by default as "refusal to take concerns seriously" is just a reflection on your attitudes about other people, not any real argument for improving privacy or safety. You ARE a morally panicked maniac if your only grossly offensive things you want to keep pretending are horrifying examples have absolutely nothing to do with the invasion of privacy of children and more to do with puritanical outrage on children accessing adult material.
- j45 10mo ago
  Except parents not being trained to really use it unless they look for it specifically.
  - pluralmonad 10mo ago
    Yes, a parents attention is a limited and valuable resource. It is a parents job to monitor the environment for dangers to their children. Not to neuter the entire adult world to make it pseudosafe for kids.
    - j45 10mo ago
      It's less about neutering, and more about diet. Junk food and processed sugar creates dietary based ADHD kids. One's information diet also changes how the brain develops, that's not a pseudo threat. I sense some trepidation around not having unfettered access to swim in the whole ocean as a child with more and more sharks and angel fish floating around. The environment to monitor is increasingly digital, not just in person. See my note above about parents who think their kids are safe at home, when they're letting the entire unfiltered world into their kids devices, eyes, minds without context.
- Nevermark 10mo ago
  > implementing fully optional, widely blocking restrictions as "parental safety options") was the industry taking it seriously The myriad of settings, accessed differently on every site or service, that everyone needs to be aware of, and actively fight dysfunctional defaults and frequent "helpful" resets after updates, are not the solution parents or anyone else are looking for. Why are the defaults set to favor the company, in a way that makes them real customer/user-targeted security holes that people have to play endless wack-a-mole to secure themselves? That is industry taking plausible deniability and the monetizing potential of parasitical behavior at scale "seriously" indeed.
ninkendo 10mo ago
While we’re posting honest opinions that run against the consensus on this site: In my view, freedom of speech is a natural right that no government can take away. But no such guarantee exists that you can do so anonymously. Now before you immediately flame me to death, please read a bit further: We already have a hodgepodge of laws in basically every jurisdiction around logging IP addresses, cooperating with law enforcement when there’s a warrant, being able to track down who is (say) organizing violence, posting csam, etc. Like it or not, the government is entitled to search and seizure if there is a warrant signed by a judge to do so, and if you run an online service where can people can post things publicly, you better damn well keep logs of who’s posting things and you better cooperate if a law enforcement officer with a warrant asks you to. So what I propose is that we streamline all of this. At age 16 you get a digital ID that works something like a FIDO chip that can be used to prove your identity to a government authentication server. Sub in/out whatever tech you want, it can be a passkey (blech), something resembling a yubikey, etc. You get them at your local post office, where you can actually prove your identity in person. There’s post offices everywhere, and they’re already meant to serve everyone in the country. But critically, this key isn’t used to auth to any sites except a government-run signin service. The service itself would be a modified form of OAuth/OIDC that preserves privacy from the site you’re making an account on. They don’t know who you are, they just get a signed payload from the government signin site saying “this is a user over the age of 16”, and via a pre-established relationship between the website in question and the government auth site, a UUID is minted for that legal person. It will be the same UUID for that website for the same person, so you can’t just pretend you’re multiple people when you create multiple accounts. With this system, and using Reddit as an example site that may leverage this: - Reddit can’t know who you actually are, they only get a UUID and a signed payload indicating you’re over 16 (or whatever other set of properties are legally salient for the account.) In the event of a breach, all you’d get is a list of Reddit-specific UUID’s. You’d have to also hack the government auth service to know who these people actually are. - The government doesn’t know who owns your username on Reddit, they only know the list of citizens that have Reddit accounts at all. - In the event of a crime with a warrant, the government can compel Reddit to inform them which UUID corresponds to some account. Reddit continues to not know who the account belongs to. - Every site using this system gets a completely different UUID for the same legal person and has no ability to correlate them - Every legal person using this system has no idea what their UUID is for any site - Every site using this doesn’t have to worry at all about proving identity. They get working auth for every legal person in $country, streamlining signups and onboarding, and doesn’t have to worry about asking the user to prove they’re over 16. - You still get pseudo-anonymity in that you can use an alias (as many as the site allows, too), the site can remain blissfully ignorant as to who you really are, as well as everyone who reads your posts, etc. - The government can find out who owns an account, but only with a warrant. They don’t have a list of account/UUID mappings anywhere. This system is probably the most closely aligned to how I would do things if I was somehow “in charge”… you have a right to pseudo-anonymity, but you don’t have a right to cover your tracks so thoroughly that the government can’t track you down with a proper warrant. With such a system, saying “social media is for ages 16 and up” is a simple checkbox in the signup flow. Done. You can argue all day about whether a government should be able to uncloak your accounts with a warrant, but to me that question is already settled: yes, they absolutely can do that, they do so today all the time. Except today we have messy data breaches where everyone’s identity gets leaked because every site has to reinvent their own form of proving your legal identity (in the case of Facebook/etc) or simply proving you’re a certain age (uploading ID, etc.). I’d take a centralized government-run approach to what we have today any day. You could ask “but should government be in the business of electronic authentication and identity?” And my answer is: “YES.” It’s basically the primary function of a working government! We trust them to issue passports for chrissake. To me this is basic table stakes in the 21st century. If we did government all over again, having the government provide a service to prove online identity is basically right up there with “collects tax revenue.” Now, in the current government up to the challenge of doing this, and not fucking it up? Yeeesh, probably not. You got me there. But one can dream…
sfRattan 10mo ago
I remain sympathetic to parents who don't know where to start in terms of understanding technology and computers. It is a big topic. But I am entirely unsympathetic to parents who throw up their hands and make no effort. At this point, any parent saying, "I just don't understand technology," or, "I just don't have the time to mind my childrens' computer use or monitor their Internet access," is morally equivalent to saying, "I just don't understand traffic safety," and, "I just don't have the time to teach my children the rules of the road or how to cross the street," while living in a big, bustling city. It is lazy, entitled, and negligent. The world is full of networked computers and, barring some new massive Carrington event, is never going back to the way it was before.
- j45 10mo ago
  Many parents think their kids are safe when they are inside the home, without realizing they are letting in the entire world, including things worse than they ever imagined into their homes, through the devices. In the past, the general disconnection of the world and information had a natural insulation factor. Probably less so today. Rather than admonish adults, it's actually quite common that many people in many professions don't know how to purchase, or implement software in their day to day work, let alone at home. Maybe, this is is an aspect of digital literacy that has been lacking - we know that the consumer habit loop that smartphones go after is not always about digital health, or the user's digital literacy, it's about capturing their attention. Parents actually seem to want the same kind of quality curation not just with the internet, but all areas of their children's lives. The free for all they may have grown up with 20-40 years ago is simply not the same any more online, or offline. In that way, even trying to make an effort sometimes isn't enough I'd say. Ignorance is one thing, but maybe it could seem like negligence to others. Would there be some possible solutions or approaches you or others could offer here to help parents build the skills that lead to not giving up? Sincerely curious where folks see the starting point of these skills.
  - sfRattan 10mo ago
    >Ignorance is one thing, but maybe it could seem like negligence to others. In person I've found the difference to be usually very clear. It's why I distinguish between the sympathic attitude of "I don't know where to start" and the contemptible reaction that "therefore I will act as if nothing is wrong, or write it off as someone else's fault." >Would there be some possible solutions or approaches you or others could offer here to help parents build the skills that lead to not giving up? Sincerely curious where folks see the starting point of these skills. It's a hard problem. I've spent a lot of time thinking about it, and almost as much time talking to relatives with children. I have come to no happy, easy answers. Carey Parker's Firewalls Don't Stop Dragons is a good starting point to Security and Privacy, but not really how computers work. There are various books I remember from childhood about how computers work, but I don't really remember the process of coming to understand computers distinctly because it was both early and continuous over a long period. I think the best we'll do as a species is one-to-three computer people per extended family. And I think the key will be teaching those people how to be of service to their families. But there's not really an existing framework for a "computer court wizard" in each family nor for what maxims and/or proscriptions such a person might teach computer illiterate family members in order to use computers safely and protect the family's children from the worst of dark algorithms, surveillance, and abuse/predators online. It's completely uncharted territory.
Madmallard 10mo ago
"because everyone has had enough, and nobody has patience left for kids watching BDSM on their friend’s phones at 12." Is that the reason? I really don't think so. I just think it's a power grab by the participants in government and tech companies.
- Nevermark 10mo ago
  When people are operating at two levels, you can't leave either unaddressed. That plays into the hands of those using subterfuge. The power grab is riding on reasonable concerns about children. So its worth improving safety for children for two reasons: (1) reducing parents reasonable concerns and making parenting in the modern age a bit easier, and to (2) take that issue off the table (or meaningfully reduce the leverage it supplies), for the power grabbers. Ironically, the fact that the underhanded motives lie beneath a reasonable concern, makes solving the reasonable concern in a healthy way even more critical.
  - Madmallard 10mo ago
    Is it a reasonable concern? Parents are supposed to raise their children.
    - Nevermark 10mo ago
      > Is it a reasonable concern? Yes. > Parents are supposed to raise their children. Yes. Vapid questions and statements aside, ... Here is just one solution that helps parents, and respects everyone's privacy: Zero knowledge proofs. Which allow anyone who is verified by anyone already (i.e. credit card company, ...) to get a cryptographic key from that organization, that they can use to anonymously verifiably assert they are 18+ to sites, (1) without giving sites any other information, and (2) without their key source getting any information on what sites they visit.
Bradsburied 10mo ago
> Parents, especially with the advent of social media, hardcore pornography, and every childhood friend having a device, correctly said this was unreasonable and impossible. It is neither unreasonable or impossible. No need to hand the kids a device that can access the open internet. If parents do, restrict or deny gadget time. Stick to a Nintendo or console. Learned helplessness and codependency on internet is part of the sales pitch of big tech, salesmen in general. They push self doubt and sell their solution. Fill the time showing kids how to rotate tires and change oil. Show them how to make pizza crust. Learned helplessness is a feature of capitalism. Not immutable feature of physical existence.
wizardforhire 10mo ago
BDSM at twelve!?! Thats nothing compared to what we grew up with… just make it really really slow to download, being back the old internet!
razakel 10mo ago
It is not my job to parent your fucking child. You want to talk about responsibility? Take some.

tolerance 10mo ago

Before anyone who hasn’t read the actual link reacts to its current title and gets swept up by the single thread that’s dominated the entirety of this submission, it’s an interview. Alexander Linton of the Session Technology Foundation on building decentralized messaging and why platform-wide content moderation is impractical on encrypted platforms. Not familiar with him or the platform. But sounds like an interesting exchange.

kazinator 10mo ago

Today's FTFY: s/Privacy/Anonymity/ Make sure that it's impossible for my online actions to be traced to my identity, and then I don't need privacy, because there is no association that needs to be hidden and protected.

baobun 10mo ago
I see this distinction mentioned from time to time and it doesn't make sense to me. IMO, your actions not being tracable to your identity is privacy. In this framing, anonymity is part of privacy. You desire anonymity because of the privacy it gives you. Which is not to say that anonymity is always required for privacy though it tends to strengthen it. Similarly, sometimes people say there's a tradeoff between security and privacy, which doesn't make sense since privacy (confidentiality) is one dimension of information security. If you still disagree, could you attempt at defining privacy and anonymity and how you can prioritize meaningful anonymity without caring about privacy?
- pluralmonad 10mo ago
  Probably a push back against the commercialization of the term privacy to now mean "we get your data and share it widely for money making purposes, but here are the terms so you have privacy."
  - peebee67 10mo ago
    "Privacy policy" is definitely one of the most prominent Newspeak terms around today. The full term should read "how we'll violate your privacy policy".
- kazinator 10mo ago
  There are two sense of "privacy". Actual privacy, which of course is subsumed under anonymity, and the fake "privacy" that everyone is telling you they have a policy about and are assuring, while they track you and collect personal information.
  - 10mo ago

senorqa 10mo ago

I’m puzzled by the limited opposition from businesses regarding government attempts to access encrypted communications. Granting governments easy access—which inevitably leads to uncontrolled monitoring—compromises a company’s most valuable asset: its privacy. This would effectively hand over the keys to their operations, exposing them to security breaches, stifling growth potential, limiting access to competitive markets, and ultimately, jeopardizing company ownership. Corrupt officials could exploit this access to manipulate markets, facilitate insider trading, sabotage business plans, and even plant fabricated evidence within company communications and systems, leading to potential takeover and imprisonment of owners.

teddyh 10mo ago
In my experience, companies care about things that affect them but not their competitors. But government shenanigans tend to affect all companies equally, and so does not affect market share, and is therefore mostly ignored by companies.

ankit9571066 10mo ago

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Nevermark 10mo ago

As already posted in another comment: Here is just one solution that helps parents, and respects everyone's privacy: Zero knowledge proofs. Allow any organization that already legitimately verifies ages (i.e. credit card company, driver's license issuer, ...) to provide a cryptographic key to their clients, that they can use to anonymously verifiably assert they are 18+ to any adult sites they visit. This solution (1) gives sites no user information except 18+ verification, and (2) gives key providers no information about sites clients visit. This is what zero knowledge proofs are for. Everyone wins: • Parents jobs get easier. • Children are less likely to encounter adult material. • Everyone's privacy is protected. • Adult sites can verify 18+ ages, without driving users away. Not solving/mitigating endemic child access to adult sites is (1) a great disservice to parents and children, and (2) makes the success of draconian surveillance legislation MORE likely. (If you have a critique of this solution, please frame it as an issue to resolve, not a categorical swipe at crafting solutions. The cynical prevalence of the latter is so damaging to these debates.)

ElectroBuffoon 10mo ago
Or parents could set accounts to "child" and every service send the proper tags so the programs deny access locally. No third parties involved. PICS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platform_for_Internet_Content_Selection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platform_for_Internet_Content_... POWDER https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol_for_Web_Description_Resources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol_for_Web_Description_R... ASACP/RTA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_Sites_Advocating_Child_Protection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_Sites_Advocatin...
- dormento 10mo ago
  Also known as "parenting". This would be solved long ago if it were not a politically charged topic. So much wasted time, it boggles the mind.
  - Nevermark 10mo ago
    I am having trouble understanding how anyone is unaware that children have pervasive and useful access to devices outside of their parent's sphere on a daily basis. Or why anyone would discourage use of cryptographically hard privacy protecting solutions. This is the perfect opportunity to take zero knowledge proofs mainstream, like end-to-end encryption, as a solution for myriads of current privacy leaking services and infrastructure. The alternative to cryptographically protected privacy, is sites increasingly collecting people's identifiable information and associating their identities with access/behavior logs. Information that can never be assumed to stay private.

Lapsa 10mo ago

reminder - there's tech out there capable of reading your mind. noninvasively and from afar

NoGravitas 10mo ago

I was two thirds of the way into the article before they revealed that this messenger is just a shitcoin vehicle.