7 ms·

It's not an accident that its so hard to get this stuff right, I've heard countless stories like this from friends who are parents. If the market wanted parent

It's not an accident that its so hard to get this stuff right, I've heard countless stories like this from friends who are parents. If the market wanted parents to be able to figure this out it would be getting it right. It's obviously a dark pattern that benefits everyone but the parents and their children. If more people stopped to think deeper about this they would and should be very disturbed by what this means.

immibis 9mo ago
And yet whenever the idea of changing this stuff at a societal level comes up, HN is filled with thought-deleting cries of "parents just need to be more responsible"
- squigz 9mo ago
  Usually when those discussions come up, there are plenty of people recognizing both that 1) parents do need to be more responsible, but also that 2) we need sane parental control systems. What we don't need is more bandaids that make it appear as if something is being done.
  - cindyllm 9mo ago
    [dead]
  - watwut 9mo ago
    Parents are already plenty responsible. Societal expectation on parents are sky high and ever increasing. Meanwhile, the same people refuse to accept anything that would make parental responsibility easier.
    - istjohn 9mo ago
      A supporting citation: > In 1965, mothers spent a daily average of 54 minutes on child care activities, while moms in 2012 averaged almost twice that at 104 minutes per day. Fathers’ time with children nearly quadrupled – 1965 dads spent a daily average of just 16 minutes with their kids, while today’s fathers spend about 59 minutes a day caring for them. https://news.uci.edu/2016/09/28/todays-parents-spend-more-time-with-their-kids-than-moms-and-dads-did-50-years-ago/ https://news.uci.edu/2016/09/28/todays-parents-spend-more-ti...
      - squigz 9mo ago
        1-2 hours a day? That does seem sky-high...
        watwut 9mo ago
        It is double of what they spent in 1965 for moms. It is actually quite a huge chunk of a day, enough to make parents isolated and overworked. And yes, expectations on parents are sky high compared to before. From small stuff to large stuff.
        expedition32 9mo ago
        The thing is that parents need to raise functioning adults. Now in modern society that means that children NEED access to computers and the internet. From HN you just get the usual "raise your child as Amish" bullshit. Not very useful.
  - mschuster91 9mo ago
    > Usually when those discussions come up, there are plenty of people recognizing both that 1) parents do need to be more responsible, but also that 2) we need sane parental control systems. Dunno. My generation grew up to be generally fine people, without parental control software crap (and the poor sods who had parents insisting on it only became better hackers for it). Back then, there was things such as rottencom, 4chan or its various predecessors... there were countless instructions on how to make explosives or whatever readily available, hoards of porn (ever been to a LAN party and came home with less porn on your HDD than before?). And yes there were also alll the creeps. The only thing that wasn't anywhere near as prevalent as today is all the gambling/mtx crap and AI slop. Hell even brainrot was a thing, half of the chan boards consisted of utterly weird memes that make "skibidi toilet" blush in comparison.
    - pixl97 9mo ago
      >My generation grew up to be generally fine people, [Look at current voters in the US] Ya sure about that?
      - mschuster91 9mo ago
        Yes. Even Harris, as unpopular as it gets with the youth (the whole being a cop thing), still got 13% more than Trump did [1]. If there is one group of voters to blame for the current situation in the US, it is Boomers and older. This age bucket not only skews heavily towards Trump, but also hoards by far the most wealth [2]. [1] https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2025/06/26/voting-patterns-in-the-2024-election/ https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2025/06/26/voting-patte... [2] https://www.empower.com/the-currency/life/average-net-worth-by-age https://www.empower.com/the-currency/life/average-net-worth-...
- throwway120385 9mo ago
  Yeah -- alongside cries of "why isn't anyone having children anymore?"
toss1 9mo ago
Exactly >>"Here's what I want: an off switch. A single setting that says "this child cannot go online, communicate with strangers, spend money, or download anything without my explicit permission." Instead I get a maze, complex enough that when something goes wrong, I'm at fault for a tooltip I didn't hover over, a blog post I didn't read, a submenu I didn't find. Maybe that's by design. Maybe it's neglect. I don't know. " When it happens only a few times, it might be neglect. This is absolutely by design. And think again if you think any large corporation (beyond a few isolated individuals who will not be employed there for long) has any actual concern for your safety, or to get anything right beyond an appearance of safety and plausible deniability for the inevitable harm caused by their dark patterns. The only winning move is not to play. Don't play and write about how awful it is. Send them the only message that they will hear. Stop giving them your money.
- unloader6118 9mo ago
  > When it happens only a few times, it might be neglect. This is absolutely by design. Not sure if I want to call it by design. It is not a dark pattern, it is just "what is the minimum we can do to sell this without doing the curation work?"
  - toss1 9mo ago
    Building 29 separate settings with confusing and overlapping effects is less work than making a single setting of: [Local Only]? Seems to be a much larger amount of work to design, implement, and support a more-or-less dozen-step customer journey that does NOT work than just implementing a few switches. And that goes even if the switch must be designed-in from the beginning by designing operation for local-only operation. Surely, implementing a simple block-all-strangers to send-to-bitbucket all communications attempts by accounts not already on the whitelist is easier than all these overlapping settings described? Unless it is explained how building a much more complex system is easier and lower-cost than a simpler system with fewer controls, the default conclusion is it is intentional. >>It is not a dark pattern, it is just "what is the minimum we can do to sell this without doing the curation work?" Even if for the sake of discussion we treat it as laziness, a dark pattern created by accident is still a dark pattern. The customer is no less screwed into doing something they do not want and the company does want.
alex-moon 9mo ago
I should guess it is about liability more than anything else. They want to advertise and sell to children, but they don't want to be taken to court about it. Makes a tonne of sense from a profit perspective, especially as people under ~25 years of age are more susceptible to impulsivity and addiction due to the developing prefrontal cortex. From a sales perspective, the younger the better (as any parent can confirm).
basket_horse 9mo ago
I disagree. I think it is an “accident” that stems from organizations rather than anything sinister. Companies generally want good parental controls, but let’s face it, it’s not the cash cow or particularly interesting. This leads to understaffed teams of b-list developers with high churn, hence the overly confusing and half-baked features.
- pavel_lishin 9mo ago
  I would easily believe that Apple, Google, Microsoft, etc., explicitly staff these teams with childless adults.
  - baq 9mo ago
    Given how easy it is for my 13yo daughter to get around screen time restrictions on iOS in ways I wouldn't believe are possible I'm not sure these people are even adults.
    - selectively 9mo ago
      Apple has an engineering base that includes people who were recently children. Think about it that way: why would they make things harder for who they were in the very recent past.
      - lovich 9mo ago
        > Apple has an engineering base that includes people who were recently children. What? I didn’t realize Apple with in the habit of hiring people straight out of high school instead of after going through enough university education that ends up with candidates in their early to mid 20s
        selectively 9mo ago
        Yep. They hire talent. University grads will work alongside red team folks that are maybe 22 years old and have been at Apple for two years. It's a thing. I personally know more than one person who has a background along those lines.
x0x0 9mo ago
Well, this is the company that builds Teams. One axis is if they even want to make parental controls work, which they may well not want to but rather wish to just check some checkboxes. But the company that builds Teams and Windows 11: I think it's entirely plausible they can't.
tempodox 9mo ago
In the absence of consumer protection laws, this kind of abuse is to be expected.

immibis 9mo ago

And yet whenever the idea of changing this stuff at a societal level comes up, HN is filled with thought-deleting cries of "parents just need to be more responsible"

squigz 9mo ago
Usually when those discussions come up, there are plenty of people recognizing both that 1) parents do need to be more responsible, but also that 2) we need sane parental control systems. What we don't need is more bandaids that make it appear as if something is being done.
- cindyllm 9mo ago
  [dead]
- watwut 9mo ago
  Parents are already plenty responsible. Societal expectation on parents are sky high and ever increasing. Meanwhile, the same people refuse to accept anything that would make parental responsibility easier.
  - istjohn 9mo ago
    A supporting citation: > In 1965, mothers spent a daily average of 54 minutes on child care activities, while moms in 2012 averaged almost twice that at 104 minutes per day. Fathers’ time with children nearly quadrupled – 1965 dads spent a daily average of just 16 minutes with their kids, while today’s fathers spend about 59 minutes a day caring for them. https://news.uci.edu/2016/09/28/todays-parents-spend-more-time-with-their-kids-than-moms-and-dads-did-50-years-ago/ https://news.uci.edu/2016/09/28/todays-parents-spend-more-ti...
    - squigz 9mo ago
      1-2 hours a day? That does seem sky-high...
      - watwut 9mo ago
        It is double of what they spent in 1965 for moms. It is actually quite a huge chunk of a day, enough to make parents isolated and overworked. And yes, expectations on parents are sky high compared to before. From small stuff to large stuff.
        expedition32 9mo ago
        The thing is that parents need to raise functioning adults. Now in modern society that means that children NEED access to computers and the internet. From HN you just get the usual "raise your child as Amish" bullshit. Not very useful.
- mschuster91 9mo ago
  > Usually when those discussions come up, there are plenty of people recognizing both that 1) parents do need to be more responsible, but also that 2) we need sane parental control systems. Dunno. My generation grew up to be generally fine people, without parental control software crap (and the poor sods who had parents insisting on it only became better hackers for it). Back then, there was things such as rottencom, 4chan or its various predecessors... there were countless instructions on how to make explosives or whatever readily available, hoards of porn (ever been to a LAN party and came home with less porn on your HDD than before?). And yes there were also alll the creeps. The only thing that wasn't anywhere near as prevalent as today is all the gambling/mtx crap and AI slop. Hell even brainrot was a thing, half of the chan boards consisted of utterly weird memes that make "skibidi toilet" blush in comparison.
  - pixl97 9mo ago
    >My generation grew up to be generally fine people, [Look at current voters in the US] Ya sure about that?
    - mschuster91 9mo ago
      Yes. Even Harris, as unpopular as it gets with the youth (the whole being a cop thing), still got 13% more than Trump did [1]. If there is one group of voters to blame for the current situation in the US, it is Boomers and older. This age bucket not only skews heavily towards Trump, but also hoards by far the most wealth [2]. [1] https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2025/06/26/voting-patterns-in-the-2024-election/ https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2025/06/26/voting-patte... [2] https://www.empower.com/the-currency/life/average-net-worth-by-age https://www.empower.com/the-currency/life/average-net-worth-...
throwway120385 9mo ago
Yeah -- alongside cries of "why isn't anyone having children anymore?"

toss1 9mo ago

Exactly >>"Here's what I want: an off switch. A single setting that says "this child cannot go online, communicate with strangers, spend money, or download anything without my explicit permission." Instead I get a maze, complex enough that when something goes wrong, I'm at fault for a tooltip I didn't hover over, a blog post I didn't read, a submenu I didn't find. Maybe that's by design. Maybe it's neglect. I don't know. " When it happens only a few times, it might be neglect. This is absolutely by design. And think again if you think any large corporation (beyond a few isolated individuals who will not be employed there for long) has any actual concern for your safety, or to get anything right beyond an appearance of safety and plausible deniability for the inevitable harm caused by their dark patterns. The only winning move is not to play. Don't play and write about how awful it is. Send them the only message that they will hear. Stop giving them your money.

unloader6118 9mo ago
> When it happens only a few times, it might be neglect. This is absolutely by design. Not sure if I want to call it by design. It is not a dark pattern, it is just "what is the minimum we can do to sell this without doing the curation work?"
- toss1 9mo ago
  Building 29 separate settings with confusing and overlapping effects is less work than making a single setting of: [Local Only]? Seems to be a much larger amount of work to design, implement, and support a more-or-less dozen-step customer journey that does NOT work than just implementing a few switches. And that goes even if the switch must be designed-in from the beginning by designing operation for local-only operation. Surely, implementing a simple block-all-strangers to send-to-bitbucket all communications attempts by accounts not already on the whitelist is easier than all these overlapping settings described? Unless it is explained how building a much more complex system is easier and lower-cost than a simpler system with fewer controls, the default conclusion is it is intentional. >>It is not a dark pattern, it is just "what is the minimum we can do to sell this without doing the curation work?" Even if for the sake of discussion we treat it as laziness, a dark pattern created by accident is still a dark pattern. The customer is no less screwed into doing something they do not want and the company does want.

alex-moon 9mo ago

I should guess it is about liability more than anything else. They want to advertise and sell to children, but they don't want to be taken to court about it. Makes a tonne of sense from a profit perspective, especially as people under ~25 years of age are more susceptible to impulsivity and addiction due to the developing prefrontal cortex. From a sales perspective, the younger the better (as any parent can confirm).

basket_horse 9mo ago

I disagree. I think it is an “accident” that stems from organizations rather than anything sinister. Companies generally want good parental controls, but let’s face it, it’s not the cash cow or particularly interesting. This leads to understaffed teams of b-list developers with high churn, hence the overly confusing and half-baked features.

pavel_lishin 9mo ago
I would easily believe that Apple, Google, Microsoft, etc., explicitly staff these teams with childless adults.
- baq 9mo ago
  Given how easy it is for my 13yo daughter to get around screen time restrictions on iOS in ways I wouldn't believe are possible I'm not sure these people are even adults.
  - selectively 9mo ago
    Apple has an engineering base that includes people who were recently children. Think about it that way: why would they make things harder for who they were in the very recent past.
    - lovich 9mo ago
      > Apple has an engineering base that includes people who were recently children. What? I didn’t realize Apple with in the habit of hiring people straight out of high school instead of after going through enough university education that ends up with candidates in their early to mid 20s
      - selectively 9mo ago
        Yep. They hire talent. University grads will work alongside red team folks that are maybe 22 years old and have been at Apple for two years. It's a thing. I personally know more than one person who has a background along those lines.

x0x0 9mo ago

Well, this is the company that builds Teams. One axis is if they even want to make parental controls work, which they may well not want to but rather wish to just check some checkboxes. But the company that builds Teams and Windows 11: I think it's entirely plausible they can't.

tempodox 9mo ago

In the absence of consumer protection laws, this kind of abuse is to be expected.