24 ms·

We'll try everything, it seems, other than holding parents accountable for what their children consume. In the United States, you can get in trouble if you rec

• lenerdenator 8mo ago
  The thing is, what are the parents to do beyond restricting things? You find out some creep has been talking to Junior; do you talk to your local police department, state agency, or to the feds? We've never properly acted upon reports of predators grooming children by investigating them, charging them, holding trials, and handing down sentences on any sort of large scale. There's a patchwork of LEOs that have to handle things and they have to do it right. Once the packets are sent over state lines, we have to involve the feds, and that's another layer. Previously, I would have said it's up to platforms like Discord to organize internal resources to make sure that the proper authorities received reports, because it felt like there were instances of people being reported and nothing happening on the platform's side. Now, given recent developments, I'm not sure we can count upon authorities to actually do the job.
  • robomartin 8mo ago
    > The thing is, what are the parents to do beyond restricting things? Well, I can't speak for parents (as in all parents). I can, however, tell you what we did. When two of my kids were young we gave them iPods. The idea was to load a few fun educational applications (I had written and published around 10 at the time). Very soon they asked for Clash of Clans to play for a couple of hours on Saturdays. We said that was OK provided they stuck to that rule. Fast forward to maybe a couple of months later. After repeated warnings that they were not sticking to the plan and promises to do so, I found them playing CoC under the blankets at 11 PM, when they were supposed to be sleeping and had school the next day. I did not react and gave no indication of having witnessed that. A couple of days later I asked each of them to their room and asked them to place their top ten favorite toys on the floor. I then produced a pair of huge garbage bags and we put the toys in them, one bag for each of the kids. I also asked for their iPods. No anger, no scolding, just a conversation at a normal tone. I asked them to grab the bags and follow me. We went outside, I opened the garbage bin and told them to throw away their toys. It got emotional very quickly. I also gave them the iPods and told them to toss them into the bin. After the crying subsided I explained that trust is one of the most delicate things in the world and that this was a consequence of them attempting to deceive us by secretly playing CoC when they knew the rules. This was followed by daily talks around the dinner table to explain just how harmful and addictive this stuff could be, how it made them behave and how important it was to honor promises. Another week later I asked them to come into the garage with me and showed them that I had rescued their favorite toys from the garbage bin. The iPods were gone forever. And now there was a new rule: They could earn one toy per month by bringing top grades from school, helping around the house, keeping their rooms clean and organized and, in general, being well behaved. That was followed by ten months of absolutely perfect kids learning about earning something they cherished every month. Of course, the behavior and dedication to their school work persisted well beyond having earned their last toy. Lots of talks, going out to do things and positive feedback of course. They never got the iPods back. They never got social media accounts. They did not get smart phones until much older. To this day, now well into university, they thank me for having taken away their iPods. So, again, I don't know about parents in the aggregate, but I don't think being a good parent is difficult. You are not there to be an all-enabling friend, you are there to guide a new human through life and into adulthood. You are there to teach them everything and, as I still tell them all the time, aim for them to be better than you. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99j0zLuNhi8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99j0zLuNhi8
    • robofartin 8mo ago
      > I explained that trust is one of the most delicate things in the world > lies to own children about throwing their toys away
      • Terr_ 8mo ago
        I can't tell whether "destroying all your favorite toys" was a clear expectation the kids already had as a possible outcome of their choices. __________ 1. Teach children about consequences... by using clear expectations, timely feedback, and proportional responses. 2. Teach children about consequences... by allowing wrongdoing to become a festering mess until it "justifies" some big punishment that comes as deliberate emotional trauma and surprise. Separately from asking which one is more "effective" at conditioning an immediate behavior, each choice also affects how those kids are going to behave when they are in any position to set and enforce rules. Being a role-model is hard.
    • Sohcahtoa82 8mo ago
      This reads like something I'd find on /r/LinkedInLunatics, all the way down to the one-sentence/thought-per-line formatting.
    • 2duct 8mo ago
      The issue with any parent's narrative, including yours, is that it's one-sided. We'd need the story told by the children-turned-adults to make any fair judgement. Some people are going to say what their family wants them to hear and only open up to professionals or a neutral third party.
      • robomartin 8mo ago
        > We'd need the story told by the children-turned-adults to make any fair judgement. True enough. Of course, you are not going to get that in this case. All I can say is that those commenting here about potentially cataclysmic consequences are likely precisely the kind of people who will practice the kind of soft "friend class" parenting that can result in really troubled kids. If they even have kids at all, because some of the comments by others sound infantile. The other narrative that is utterly false is that of role models in the negative sense. Almost all of you are one or two generations away from a culture and style of parenting where beating the kids was considered normal and even good parenting. An era where teachers beating kids in school was also normal and accepted. And yet, that has largely not survived the generational divide except in some segments of some cultures. Raising kids and being a role model isn't a matter of single events or experiences, it is, like most other things in the human condition, a matter of building a relationship over time and understanding that life usually is a rollercoaster ride, not a straight-and-flat road.
  • ipaddr 8mo ago
    Back in the day you would beat up that person.
• numbsafari 8mo ago
  Except companies provide wholly inadequate safeguards and tools. They are buggy, inconsistent, easily circumvented, and even at time malicious. Consumers should be better able to hold providers accountable, before we start going after parents. The only real solution is to keep children off of the internet and any internet connected device until they are older. The problem there is that everything is done on-line now and it is practically impossible to avoid it without penalizing your child. If social media and its astroturfers want to avoid outright age bans, they need to stop actively exploiting children and accept other forms of regulation, and it needs to come with teeth.
  • jmholla 8mo ago
    > Except companies provide wholly inadequate safeguards and tools. They are buggy, inconsistent, easily circumvented, and even at time malicious. Consumers should be better able to hold providers accountable, before we start going after parents. We could mandate that companies that market the products actually have to deliver effective solutions.
    • numbsafari 8mo ago
      Cue blog posts about section 230 and how it’s impossible to do hard things and parents should be held accountable not companies, meager fines, captured bureaucrats, libertarians, and on and on…
  • duped 8mo ago
    Step 0 is physical device access. Kids shouldn't have tablets or smartphones or personal laptops before age 16.
    • raw_anon_1111 8mo ago
      This is the craziest thing I’ve heard in a while. They shouldn’t have connected game systems either?
      • 8mo ago
• dyauspitr 8mo ago
  This tired argument again. It doesn’t work. It’s like keeping your kid from buying alcohol but all their friends are allowed to buy it. The whole age demographic has to be locked out of the ecosystem.
  • wizzwizz4 8mo ago
    Well, yes. If your friends can all go 'round to David's house, where David's parents hand each child a case of beer and send them on their way, any attempt by the other parents to prohibit underage drinking is going to be ineffective. But most parents don't do that. (I've actually never heard of it.) So social solutions involving parent consensus clearly do work here. "But it's behavioural!" I hear you cry. "What's stopping children from going out, buying a cheap unlocked smartphone / visiting their public library / hacking the parental control system, and going on the internet anyway?" And that's an excellent objection! But, what's stopping children from playing in traffic?
    • dyauspitr 8mo ago
      Yeah but it’s illegal for the parents to give the other kids beer with serious criminal repercussions. That’s why most people make sure it doesn’t happen, not just some social sense of reponsibility. You would need something similar for smartphones/social media.
      • b40d-48b2-979e 8mo ago
        That’s why most people make sure it doesn’t happen Were you not invited to parties in high school? My experience growing up (and my experience being a neighbor to people with teenage children even now) says otherwise.
        • dyauspitr 8mo ago
          Every high school and college freshman party I’ve been to involves some serious planning to find alcohol. It’s always hit or miss and not easy.
• belorn 8mo ago
  I am a bit confused by that comment. Are parents social responsible to prevent companies from selling alcohol/guns/cigarettes to minors? If a company set up shop in a school and sold those things to minors during school breaks, who has the social responsibility to stop that?
  • gleenn 8mo ago
    Not responsible for selling to all minors, just theirs.
  • regularfry 8mo ago
    The school, in loco parentis.
  • estimator7292 8mo ago
    Companies are legally prohibited from marketing and selling certain products like tobacco and alcohol because they historically tried to. Parents are legally and socially expected to keep their kids away from tobacco and alcohol. You're breaking legal and social convention if you allow your kids to access dangerous drugs. Capitalist social media is exactly as dangerous as alcohol and tobacco. Somebody should be held responsible for that, and the legal and social framework we already have for dealing with people who want to get kids addicted to shit works fairly well.
    • trueismywork 8mo ago
      So we should ban social media is what you're saying but not what OC is saying.
      • fuzzfactor 8mo ago
        At least give it a try.
      • jatari 8mo ago
        All "social media" that uses recommendation algorithms should be unavaliable to children.
• runarberg 8mo ago
  Blaming parents is a bit unwarranted, when on the other end we have business interests driven by perverse incentives of predating on children’s gullibility for their own profit. When you say “We‘ll try everything” that is simply not true, in particular what we do not try is strict consumer protection laws which prohibits targeting children. Europe used to have such laws in the 1980s and the 1990s, but by the mid-1990s authorities had all but stopped enforcing them. We have tried consumer protection, and we know it works, but we are not trying it now. And I think there is exactly one reason for that, the tech lobby has an outsized influence on western legislators and regulators, and the tech industry does not want to be regulated.
  • ipaddr 8mo ago
    It is literally the parents responsibility. You want to blame someone else. Raising a kid doesn't mean letting society raise them you have to make tough choices. If parents can't handle that they can give them up to the state.
    • runarberg 8mo ago
      I am not gonna blame parents while businesses are allowed to target children with ads about the newest mobile game. Children are very easy to influence, and this is exploited heavily by the tech industry, who shower children with advertising. This is predatory behavior, which the legislator and the regulator of western governments (including Europe) has allowed to proliferate. We cannot expect every parent to be able to protect their children when they are being predated on by dozens of multi-million dollar companies, and the state is on the side of the companies.
      • logicchains 8mo ago
        >Children are very easy to influence, and this is exploited heavily by the tech industry, who shower children with advertising The parents' job is to say no. If they're letting themselves be influenced too, that's bad parenting.
• awakeasleep 8mo ago
  Individual Parents vs Meta Inc (1.66T mkt cap) May the best legal person win!
  • EmbarrassedHelp 8mo ago
    Its more like age verification corporations, identity verification corporations, the child "safety" organizations that were lobbying for Chat Control versus individuals who want to protect their privacy.
• eesmith 8mo ago
  > We'll try everything, it seems, other than holding parents accountable for what their children consume. The way to keep kids from eating (yummy) lead-based paint chips was not holding parents accountable to what their kids ate, but banning lead-based paint.
• Salgat 8mo ago
  This only works if I ban my child from having any friends since they all have unlimited mobile access to the internet.
  • jmye 8mo ago
    Sorry, I know it's a hard line for parents to tread and it's really easy to criticize parenting decisions other people are making, but the "everyone else is doing it so I have to" always seems as lazy to me today, as it probably did to my parents when I said it to them as a teenager. Is it more important to prevent your son from being weaponized and turned into a little ball of hate and anger, and your daughter from spending her teen years depressed and encouraged to develop eating disorders, or to make sure they can binge the same influencers as their "friends"?
    • cgriswald 8mo ago
      The number of times I objected to my parents rules because my friends didn’t have those rules and the response was: “I’m not their parent.”
    • friendzis 8mo ago
      Is it more important to prevent your child from <...>, or to not be seen as an adversarial monster?
      • lurking_swe 8mo ago
        presumably being a parent is different from being a your child’s friend. There is overlap, but yes, sometimes being a good parent requires “laying down the law”. With that being said, i think explaining _in detail_ why you’re laying down certain rules can go a LONG way toward building some trust and productive dialogue with your child. Maybe you’ll find out they are more mature than you give them credit, can loosen up a bit. Or maybe a reasonable compromise can be found. Or maybe they’ll be bitter for a few months, but they’ll at least understand “why”.
    • whaleidk 8mo ago
• vinyl7 8mo ago
  We live in a technofeudalist society now, we're all at the whims of the tech corps
  • dominicrose 8mo ago
    age verification doesn't work in favor of a tech corp like facebook as they will see some users leave, some because they don't have the age required and some because they don't want to do the verification
• adolph 8mo ago
  > holding parents accountable for what their children consume There is a local dive bar down the street. I haven't expressly told my kids that entering and ordering an alcoholic drink is forbidden. In fact, that place has a hamburger stand out front on weekends and I wouldn't discourage my kids from trying it out if they were out exploring. I still expect that the bartender would check their ID before pulling a pint for them. It takes a village to raise a child. There are no panopticons for sale the next isle over from car seats. We are doing our best with very limited tooling from the client to across the network (of which the tremendously incompetent schools make a mockery with an endless parade of new services and cross dependencies). It will take a whole of society effort to lower risks.
  • HeWhoLurksLate 8mo ago
    also there's a huge argument to be made that surveilling your kids is really really bad for their development
    • adolph 8mo ago
      Yes, my spouse and I were very conscious of this. My kids are now at an age where some of the just-in-case tracking chafes and they ditch trackers and turn off location on their watch. Its a normal renegotiation that occurs as they pass through various maturity thresholds. The older of them has thusfar rejected phones and watches and uses Omarchy on an old Thinkpad.
  • trinsic2 8mo ago
    That same argument doesn't hold water on the internet. Its a communication medium. Its like a flow of information. You don't enter or leave physically spaces. the information flows to you where ever you are. trying to apply the same kinds of laws to the internet is a recipe for disaster because you are effecting everyone at the same time.
    • adolph 8mo ago
      Yes, afaik authentication is performed by applications at L7 and as such flows via Internet protocols like anything else. All kinds of laws are applied to services provided via Internet. For example, once upon a time people said collecting sales tax was an insurmountable problem and a disaster for ecommerce. Time passes and what do you know, people figured out ways to comply with laws.
• onion2k 8mo ago
  Yes, children are clever - I was one once. A counterargument to your point that children are clever - I was also one once.
• verisimi 8mo ago
  > We'll try everything, it seems, other than holding parents accountable for what their children consume. You've missed the point. No legislator or politician cares about what the parents are doing. What they care about is gaining greater control of people's data to then coerce them endlessly (with the assitance of technology) into acting as they would liike. To do that, they need all that info. "The children" is the sugar on the pill of de-anonymised internet.
• 2duct 8mo ago
  A monitoring solution might have worked for my case if my parents had monitored my Internet history, if they always made sure to check in on what I thought/felt from what I watched and made sure I felt secure in relying on them to back me up in the worst cases. But I didn't have emotionally mature parents, and I'm sure so many children growing up now don't either. They're going to read arguments like these and say they're already doing enough. Maybe they truly believe they are, even if they're mistaken. Or maybe they won't read arguments like these at all. Parenting methods are diverse but smartphones are ubiquitous. So yes, I agree that parents need to be held accountable, but I'm torn on if the legal avenue is feasible compared to the cultural one. Children also need more social support if they can't rely on their parents like in my case, or tech is going to eat them alive. Social solutions/public works are kind of boring compared to technology solutions, but society has been around longer than smartphones.
  • ipaddr 8mo ago
    Should the state have force your parents to give you up for adoption? That's the social support the state can offer.
    • 2duct 8mo ago
      I don't think it would have helped, given the outcomes for foster children are near universally worse except in the most extreme cases of abuse. I did threaten to call CPS but I was, of course, berated for it and threatened that I would be taken away, so that shut me up. Since I was never assaulted I doubt it would have reached the standard for foster care anyway, yet the consequences still endure to this day. I was told over and over by in hindsight unqualified persons that emotional abuse wasn't real abuse, so after a few years I was disinclined to seek help. If I had had even one person that supported me unconditionally instead of none at all, even if that person wasn't a parent, I'm fairly certain I would have turned out differently. That was just a matter of luck, and I came out empty-handed. I never felt comfortable talking about what I was exposed to online with anyone, and that only hurt me further, but I was a child and couldn't see another option.
    • jama211 8mo ago
• croes 8mo ago
  > then give parents strong monitoring and restriction tools and empower them to protect their children. Because parents don’t abuse massive surveillance tools. Given that most abuse happens in the family and by parents maybe it’s a bad idea to give them so much power
  • tinfoilhatter 8mo ago
    So we should trust the governments of the world? The same governments that don't seem to be doing anything about a large group of people that visited a specific island to abuse minors?
    • croes 8mo ago
      Where did I say that? Exactly, nowhere. If I‘m contra B, it doesn’t mean I pro A
      • tinfoilhatter 8mo ago
        What other realistic option is there if parents aren't going to be empowered to raise their own children?
• watwut 8mo ago
  The expectations on parents in USA are at their historical high. What are you talking on about in here. The expectation that parents will perfectly supervise them at every moment of their life till their adulthood is a.) new b.) at its historical max.
• NoMoreNicksLeft 8mo ago
  >We'll try everything, it seems, other than holding parents accountable The government took over most parenting functions, one at a time, until the actual parent does or is capable of doing very little parenting at all. If the government doesn't like the fact that it has become the parent of these children, perhaps it shouldn't have undermined the actual parents these last 80 years. At the very least, it should refrain from usurping ever more of the parental role (not that there is much left to take). You yourself seem to be insulated from this phenomena, maybe you're unaware that it is occurring. Maybe it wouldn't change your opinions even if you were aware. >If you want to actually protect children What if I don't want to protect children (other than my own) at all? Why would you want to be these children's parents (you suggest you or at least others want to "protect" them), which strongly implies that you will act in your capacity as government, but then get all grumpy that other people are wanting to protect children by acting in their capacity of government?
• SunshineTheCat 8mo ago
  The greatest of uphill battles in today's current climate is trying to push anything in the realm of personal responsibility. Politicians' whole basis for nearly every campaign is "you're helpless, let us fix it for you." For the vast majority of problems plaguing society, the answer isn't government, it's for people changing their behavior. Same goes for parenting. But unfortunately, "you're an adult, figure it out" isn't the greatest campaign slogan (if you want to win).
  • cindyllm 8mo ago
    [dead]
  • skipants 8mo ago
    It wasn’t always this way: “Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country”
• amriksohata 8mo ago
  its like the food industry blaming parents, sugar like apps/games are designed to be addictive to the point they are act like a drug, stop the drug dealer, not the consumer.
• axus 8mo ago
  It's very easy to lock up alcohol/cigarettes, a child should never have access. Internet usage is more like broadcast media, a child should have regular access. The positives and negatives of Internet usage are more extreme than broadcast media but less than alcohol/guns. The majority of people lack the skills to properly censor Internet without hovering over the child's shoulder full-time as you would with a gun. Best you can do is keep their PC near you, but it's not enough. We agree that a creepy surveillance nanny state is not the solution, but training parents to do the censorship seems unattainable. As we do for guns/alcohol/cigarettes, mass education about the dangers is a good baseline. EDIT: And some might disagree about never having access to alcohol!
  • KoolKat23 8mo ago
    Devices such as phones come with an option when you start the device asking simply is this for a child or an adult. Your router generally these days comes with a parental filter option on start up too. Heck we have chatgpt that can guide a parent through setting up a system if they want something more custom. If people want to push, they should just push to make these set up options more ubiquitous, obvious and standardized. And perhaps fund some advertising for these features.
    • direwolf20 8mo ago
      Router parental filters are accountability sinks. They don't actually work, and they can't because we spent the last 20 years redesigning network protocols to prevent middle boxes from tampering with connections.
      • KoolKat23 8mo ago
        In what sense? DNS blockers work generally do they not? Adguard also censors google search results. I don't see why your kid should be browsing reddit. I mean even only allow whitelisted sites. As I say this can be standardized further. These measures I truly believe do not need to be 100% foolproof so long as the hurdle is high enough that children give up it's fine. And these measures could potentially notify a parent of a suspected breach or attempt to game it, without intruding too much into the child's privacy.
• basisword 8mo ago
  >> In the United States, you can get in trouble if you recklessly leave around or provide alcohol/guns/cigarettes for a minor to start using, yet somehow, the same social responsibility seems thrown out the window for parents and the web. So anyone can walk into a shop and purchase these things unrestricted? It's not the responsibility of the seller too?
  • mothballed 8mo ago
    Tobacco, yes you can order pipe tobacco and cigars online sent to your house without ID. Guns yes, you can buy a schmidt-rubin cartridge rifle or black powder revolver sent straight to your home from an online (even interstate) vendor no ID or background check, perfectly legal. Alcohol yes, you can order wine straight to your house without ID. These are all somewhat less known "loopholes" but not really turned out to be a problem despite no meaningful controls on the seller. You probably didn't even know about these loopholes, actually -- that's how little of a problem it's been.
• Fervicus 8mo ago
  > We'll try everything, it seems, other than holding parents accountable for what their children consume. The mistake in this reasoning is assuming that they are actually interested in protecting the children.
  • Wobbles42 8mo ago
    This. The world is becoming increasingly more uncertain geopolitically. We have incipient (and actual) wars coming, and near term potential for societal disruption from technological unemployment. Meanwhile social media has all but completely undermined broadcast media as a means of social control. This isn't about protecting children. It's about preventing a repeated of the Arab Spring in western countries later this decade. "Think of the children" is the oldest trick in the book, and should always be met with skepticism.
    • hunterpayne 8mo ago
      The Arab Spring was caused by a tripling of food prices. I somehow doubt something similar will happen in the west. As for the rest, ignoring the population's concerns (by suppressing social media) is the best way to cause political violence. So I see blocking the governments desires to shape political discourse as saving the politicians from themselves.
  • direwolf20 8mo ago
    GP isn't interested in protecting children either. Punishing parents harder does nothing to improve the lives of children — in fact it makes them much worse, because now they are addicted to Facebook and their parents are in jail. It just makes certain people feel morally righteous that someone got punished.
• jama211 8mo ago
  Ah, the abstinence theory of protection. How it continues to rear its ugly head. Why this utter drivel is the top comment is beyond me, unbelievable.
  • marliechiller 8mo ago
    Can you offer some rebuttal to give some credence to your point?
  • JohnMakin 8mo ago
    That is not what the post you are replying to is advocating for at all - try reading it one more time without so much hostility
• techblueberry 8mo ago
  I know this is weird, but I'm in some ways not really sure who is on the side of freedom here. I get your position, but like. The whole idea of the promise of the internet has been destroyed by newsfeeds and mega-corps. There is almost literally documented examples of Facebook executives twirling their mustaches wondering how they can get kids more addicted. This isn't a few bands with swear words, and in fact, I think that the damage these social media companies are doing is in fact, reducing the independence teens and kids that have that were the fears parents originally had. I dunno, are you uncertain about your case at all or just like. I just like, can't help but start with fuck these companies. All other arguments are downstream of that. Better the nanny state than Nanny Zuck.
  • pokstad 8mo ago
    Social media is like tobacco. We went after tobacco for targeting kids, we should do the same to social media. Highly engineered addictive content is not unlike what was done to cigarettes.
    • Gormo 8mo ago
      No, it isn't. Tobacco is a physical substance that alters users' biochemistry and creates a physical dependence. Social media is information conveyed via a computing device. You can criticize social media for what it is in its own right, without having to engage in these kinds of disingenuous equivocations.
      • bdangubic 8mo ago
        Comparing Tobacco to Social Media is like comparing me to LeBron James. I'd rather have my kid smoke a pack of day than have social media accounts
      • csmcg 8mo ago
        the mechanisms by which that information is being conveyed have been shown to be addictive as well, no?
• SecretDreams 8mo ago
  ITT are a lot* of tech workers who made their money as a cog in the system poisoning the internet that future generations would have to swim in. I wonder if toxic waste companies also tell the parents it's strictly on them to keep their kids out of the lakes that are poisoned, but once flowed cleanly? We live in a shared world with shared responsibilities. If you are working on a product, or ever did work on a product, that made the internet worse rather than better, you have a shared responsibility to right that wrong. And parents do have to protect their kids, but they can't do it alone with how systematically children are targeted today by predatory tech companies.
  • EmbarrassedHelp 8mo ago
    Age verification tech companies are lobbying heavily for governments to legally require their services. The proposed "solutions" are about funneling money into the hands of other tech companies and shady groups, while violating user privacy. If anything, we should be banning the collection of any age related information to access social media and more mature content. We need companies to respect privacy, rather than legislation even more privacy violations.
    • SecretDreams 8mo ago
      If anything, we should be preventing young people from being exposed to the version of the internet that currently exists until the tech companies that made it this way offer a solution. I am all ears if you have an alternative that big tech can implement to ensure this is the case while they are given the task of cleaning up the mess they've made?
      • trinsic2 8mo ago
        Bro the internet was made by everyday people. Corporations just imposed there shit on top of it. Im all for the corporate part going away, but I think its better if we make social media corporations transparent so we can target how they are operating those services. Age gating users is not the answer
• ragall 8mo ago
  The vast majority of parents aren't tech-savvy enough to be able to operate IT parental controls.
• b00ty4breakfast 8mo ago
  parents can be held liable for buying their kids cigarettes but, similarly, tobacco companies are (at least nominally) not supposed to target children in their advertising campaigns and in the design of their products. It's obviously not a 1/1 comparison here, because providing ID to access the internet is not analogous to providing ID to purchase a pack of Cowboy Killers but we can extrapolate to a certain extent. (inb4 DAE REGULATING FOR-PROFIT CORPORATIONS == NANNY STATE?!?!?!?!?)
• tinfoilhatter 8mo ago
  We should stop pretending these age-verification rollouts are about protecting children, because they aren't and never have been. Even if the world was full of responsible parents, there are still people and groups that want to establish a surveillance state. These systems are focused on monitoring and tracking online activity / limiting access to those who are willing to sacrifice their own personal sovereignty for access to services. There is most definitely a cult that is obsessed with the book of revelation and seeing Biblical prophecy fulfilled, and if that isn't readily obvious to folks at this juncture in time, I'm not sure what it will take. I guess they'll have to roll out the mark of the beast before people will be willing to admit it.
  • redwall_hp 8mo ago
    It's funny, all the bible wankers screamed about "the mark of the beast" over things like RealID. Now we have fascists setting up surveillance and censorship tools to tie speech and movement to centralized ID...and they're lining up to lick boots. You should need to show ID and prove you're over 18 to enter a church. At least we know they're actually harmful to children.
    • hunterpayne 8mo ago
      The people pushing this are the same ones who are always screaming about "fascists". Also, your ideas in your post are anti-liberal and anti-constitutional (in the US).
      • ajam1507 8mo ago
        A strict reading of the constitution would also imply that limiting gun ownership to those who show ID and can prove they are 18 is unconstitutional. "Anti-liberal" and "anti-constitutional" are in the eye of the beholder.
      • redwall_hp 8mo ago
        In the context of government-mandated identity checks for speech, either both are unconstitutional or they're not, in the latter case it's time to start cracking down on the dangers of religion. I hope society comes to the former conclusion and the egregious attack on freedom of speech on the internet is discontinued.
• closeparen 8mo ago
  A physical realm that is safe for children to explore in their own is clearly preferable to one where it’s transgressive to let a child go outside without an escort. It is plausible that the same applies to the digital realm.
• keithnz 8mo ago
  don't you have to age verify to get alcohol? We don't leave that up to the parents. Feels like you defeated your own argument with your examples.
  • trinsic2 8mo ago
    The internet is not an object, its a communication medium. That is an apples to organges argument, it doesn't wash.
    • keithnz 8mo ago
      incorrect. Same principle at play, you want access to something, that thing is age restricted, the vendor of the thing wants you to provide proof of age.
      • trinsic2 8mo ago
        > you want access to something Object. Internet, communication medium <- not a physical object. If it was a device that you were using to access that communication, then yes I would agree with you, but at that point they would have to age-gate the computer that gives you that access. This is clear as day and all you are doing ins proving yourself wrong.
        • keithnz 8mo ago
          doesn't matter whether it is an object or not. The age verification is the gateway before you get access, doesn't matter if it will let you chat, or if it would send you a bottle of alcohol after passing the check
• CobrastanJorji 8mo ago
  You're understating the US's policy on recklessness. We have "attractive nuisances," which means that if you put a trampoline in your backyard, and a kid passing through sees it, decides to do a sick jump off of it, and breaks their leg, that was partly your fault for having something so awesome that kids would probably like.
  • Aurornis 8mo ago
    > which means that if you put a trampoline in your backyard, and a kid passing through sees it, decides to do a sick jump off of it, and breaks their leg, that was partly your fault for having something so awesome that kids would probably like. That's not exactly accurate. The two key parts of the attractive nuisance law are a failure to secure something combined with the victim being too young to understand the risks. So if you put a trampoline in your front yard, that's an easy attractive nuisance case. If you put a pool in your back yard with a fence and a locked gate, it would be much harder to argue that it was an attractive nuisance. If a 17 year old kid comes along and breaks into your back yard by hopping a 6-foot tall fence, you'd also have a hard time knowing they didn't understand that their activities came with some risk. Most cases are about very young children, though there are exceptions
    • fuzzfactor 8mo ago
      >put a trampoline in your front yard This is exactly what one of our neighbors did when I was growing up. All the kids loved it. There just weren't very many lawsuits back then like there are now after the number of attorneys proliferated so much. To be as safe as they could, the parents put the trampoline in a pit where the bouncing surface was at ground level. If you drove by, you wouldn't even be able to see it, or have any idea that it was there. Unless there was somebody bouncing at the time. You should have seen the look on peoples' faces when they drove down our street and saw that for the first time :)
  • rootusrootus 8mo ago
    It would not be quite that simple. The trampoline (or pool, or whatever) would have to be visible, in a place children were likely to be, not protected by any reasonable amount of care, and the kid would have to be young enough to not know any better. The legal doctrine is also not specific to the US, of course.
• kgwxd 8mo ago
  None of this push has anything to do with protecting children. Never has, never will. Stop helping them push the narrative, it's making the problem WAY worse.
• lencastre 8mo ago
  you can’t blame it on parents alone, but the odds are stacked against children and their parents, there are very smart people whose income depends on making sure you never leave your black mirror the surveillance state is possible, achievable, and a few coordination games away from deployment with backing from a majority who should know better inertia kills, I dunno
• everdev 8mo ago
  [dead]
• csours 8mo ago
  I'm 40. Do I need to get my parents to vouch for me? Who vouches for them? > then give parents strong monitoring and restriction tools As written, this sounds very glib. I cannot take this comment seriously without a game theory scenario with multiple actors.
• j45 8mo ago
  The parents themselves weren't raised with the digital literacy required. This doesn't put the parents off the hooks, if you or anyone can share any resources that are as easily consumable, viral and applicable as the content that is the issue that can reach parents I would be happy to help it spread. The reality is kids today are facing the most advanced algorithms and even the most competent parents have a high bar to reach. The solution is simple. I want to permit whatever the pixels are on a childs screen. Full stop. That hasn't been solved for a reason. Because developing such a gate would work and not allow algorithms to reach kids directly and indirectly. The alternative is not ideal, but until there's something better, what it will be and that's well proven for the mental health side of things of raising resilient kids who don't become troubled young adults - no need for social media, or touch screens until 10-13. There are lots of ways to create with technology, and learning to use words (llms) and keyboards seems to increasingly have merit.
  • hunterpayne 8mo ago
    > "The parents themselves weren't raised with the digital literacy required." At this point, that isn't true anymore. There was social media when the parents were school aged. The world didn't start when you were 10 and the Internet is a half century old.
    • j45 8mo ago
      I thought the same thing until someone asked me how many of them have been able to overcome digital addiction and set a path ahead that's healthy. Being literate in something isn't just knowing how to use it, but how to manage it's use for one's self and for others. Once you see the importance of it, knowing where/how to start to manage what kids are exposed to that is age or developmentally appropriate for them is entirely a different skill to meet and manage the digtial literacy of another human, especially a child.
• fhub 8mo ago
  If you are interested in learning about the other perspective, you can watch some parents’ congressional testimony here https://youtu.be/y8ddg4460xc?si=-yYduYDppF4TQWqD https://youtu.be/y8ddg4460xc?si=-yYduYDppF4TQWqD. The character.ai one is gut wrenching.
• Spooky23 8mo ago
  It’s weird that you blame the victim. The real question is why do we leave it to parents or intrusive surveillance instead of holding companies accountable?
• mrcwinn 8mo ago
  Do you have kids?
• luckydata 8mo ago
  Excellent example of low effort cookie cutter empty rhetoric that would fit perfectly in reddit.
• chairmansteve 8mo ago
  "We'll try everything, it seems, other than holding parents accountable for what their children consume". We'll try anything, it seems, other than hold internet companies accountable for the society destroying shit they publish. And it's not jusy children who's lives they are destroying.
• Forgeties79 8mo ago
  > We'll try everything, it seems, other than holding parents accountable for what their children consume. It’s not a fair fight. These are multi-billion dollar companies with international reach and decades of investment and research weaponized against us to make us all little addicts. Additionally, it’s not fair or reasonable to ask parents to screen literally everything their kids do with a screen at all times any more than it was reasonable for your parents to always know what you were watching on TV at all times. This is bootstraps/caveat emptor by a different name. It’s not “I want someone else to raise my kids.” It’s “the current state of affairs shouldn’t be so hostile that I have to maintain constant digital vigilance over my children.” Hell if you do people then lecture you about how “back in their day they played in the street and into the night” and call you a helicopter parent
  • hunterpayne 8mo ago
    You are screwed but not for the reason you claim. Its because you don't take any accountability for yourself. There is/was no hope for someone who does that at any point in human history. Is it fair? Nope...but it also doesn't mean you have 0 autonomy.
    • Forgeties79 8mo ago
      > You are screwed but not for the reason you claim. Its because you don't take any accountability for yourself. That was an incredibly rude personal attack and completely unwarranted. You cannot talk to people like that here. I won’t be discussing this with you further. Have a good rest of your week.
    • shimman 8mo ago
      So when people try to take accountability in a democratic government, by changing the law to what they want through democratic means that suddenly is having no accountability for one's self? Good lord, Silicon Valley must have lead pipes.
      • deleted 8mo ago
        [deleted]
• gretch 8mo ago
  I agree with you that parents should be responsible, but your argument is clearly flawed. > you can get in trouble if you recklessly leave around or provide alcohol/guns/cigarettes for a minor to start using In the example here, there are 3 things where age verification is required AND parents have responsibility. It’s not just one or the other. The same responsibilities are not “thrown out”, they are never acknowledged in the first place.
• txrx0000 8mo ago
  It's much easier to give individual users control over their own device than to give a centralized authority control over what happens on everyone's device over the Internet. Local user-controlled toggles are just easier to implement. All parental moderation mechanisms can and should be implemented as opt-in on-device settings. What governments need to do is pressure companies to implement those on-device settings. And what we can do as open-source developers is beat them to the punch. Each parent will decide whether or not to use them. Some people will, some won't. It's not Bob's responsibility to parent Charlie's children. Bob and Charlie must parent their own children. To the people arguing that parents are too dumb to control their children's tech usage because they themselves are tech-illiterate: millennia ago, we invented this new thing called fire. Most people were also "too dumb" to keep their children away from the shiny flames. People didn't know what it was or how dangerous it could be. So the tribe leader (who, by the way, gropes your children) proposed a solution: centralize control of all the fire. Only the tribe leader gets to use it to cook. Everyone else just needs to listen to him. Remember, it's all for you and your children's safety.
  • inejge 8mo ago
    > we invented this new thing called fire [...] So the tribe leader (who, by the way, gropes your children) proposed a solution: centralize control of all the fire Of all the things, a "save-the-children prolegomena to the Prometheus myth" certainly wasn't on my bingo card today. So thank you for that, but I'm not aware of any reports of fire-keeping in the way you've described. Societies and religions do have sacred traditions related to fire (like Zoroastrians) but that doesn't come with restrictions on practical use AFAIK.
    • txrx0000 8mo ago
      I'll spell it out for you since you can't read between the lines. It's not actually about fire-keeping in tribes to protect children. It's about certain people (governments, corporations, organizations) wanting control over the Internet and everyone's digital communications. They don't want a free marketplace of ideas and uncensored channels of communication because their propaganda narratives would not survive. The tribe leader refers to certain rich and powerful folks that have infiltrated governments and are running some of the largest businesses. The fire refers to instant communication over the Internet. This relatively new technology has the potential to paralyze old power structures and reshape civilization. It's understandable why governments et al are panicking. They know their authority will wane under global free speech unless they do something.
• pwndByDeath 8mo ago
  As a parent blocking websights is a joy, maybe the rule should be to allow guardians more ability to control that. Trying to block some services is not trivial As a human, I'd love to see the rest of you fools quit that. If HN ever starts to algorithm me I'll be gone too.
  • hunterpayne 8mo ago
    And as a bonus you can block your boomer parent's access to cnn and msnbc (or whatever its called now) and perhaps fox. It will make Thankgiving a lot more pleasant for all. PS Mom, I don't know why cnn doesn't work anymore. ;)
    • direwolf20 8mo ago
      I'm not Americans but isn't Fox the worst one out of those?
    • pwndByDeath 8mo ago
      If they live under my roof, it's my rules. Turn about is fair play. As for news, the art of discovering what in your subjective reality exists in the objective reality is something I don't expect well ever get gud at.
• nazgul17 8mo ago
  The difference with guns, tobacco and alcohol is huge: all negatives aside, giving kids what they want makes the life of a parent so much easier. Take it away and many parents will fight. Sugar is in the same game.
• cyanydeez 8mo ago
  We'll do everything, it seems, other than holding billionairs accountable for what their businesses consume.
• mikestorrent 8mo ago
  > give parents strong monitoring and restriction tools The problem is that it's bloody hard to actually do this. I'm in a war with my 7yo about youtube; the terms of engagement are, I can block it however I want from the network side, and if he can get around it, he can watch. Well, after many successful months of DNS block, he discovered proxies. After blocking enough of those to dissuade him, he discovered Firefox DNS-over-HTTPS, making it basically impossible to block him without blocking every Cloudflare IP or something. Would love to be wrong about that, but it seems like even just blocking a site is basically impossible without putting nanny-ware right on his machine; and that's only a bootable Linux USB stick away from being removed unless I lock down the BIOS and all that, and at that point it's not his computer and the rules of engagement have been voided. For now I'm just using "policy" to stop him, but IMO the tools that parents have are weak unless you just want your kid to be an iPad user and never learn how a computer works at all.
  • Aurornis 8mo ago
    As a parent of young children, this is your entire problem: > the terms of engagement are, I can block it however I want from the network side, and if he can get around it, he can watch. You're treating this as a technical problem, not a parental rules problem. Your own rules say he's allowed to watch! You have to set the expectations and enforce it as a parent.
    • MintPaw 8mo ago
      I think the point is that it's not enforceable.
      • mikestorrent 8mo ago
        Correct. I think that's the purpose of DoH, but it's not helping me with my little game.
    • fc417fc802 8mo ago
      Depends on what the goal is. But yeah I agree if you really don't want them on YouTube (or whatever) and really do want them to tinker with their devices then you're likely going to have to eschew technical measures for more overt ones.
• hinkley 8mo ago
  The speech that worked (mostly) on the children in my life involved the concept of 'cannot unsee', which they seemed to understand. There are some parallels to gun safety here because there are things that even the adults in your life try not to do and it seems perfectly reasonable to expect the same from children. In fact being held to a standard that adults hold themselves to is frequently seen as a rite of passage. I'm a big girl now and I put on my big girl pants to prove it.
• deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
• ajsnigrutin 8mo ago
  If your goal is to "save the children", then sure, we can discuss this... if your goal, as a government, is to have everyone get some digital ID and tie their online identities to their real names, then you do just that.
• aczerepinski 8mo ago
  As a parent, I think you’re understating how difficult it is to provide a specific amount of internet access (and no more) to a motivated kid. Kids research and trade parental control exploits, and schools issue devices with weak controls whether parents like it or not. I’m way at the extreme end of trying to control access (other than parents who don’t allow any device usage at all) and it has been one loophole after another.
• the_gipsy 8mo ago
  Should we allow kids to get cigarettes? Cocaine? Should all parents "just" be better parents and problem solved?
• throwaway27448 8mo ago
  You can expect the individual to compensate for a poorly structured society all you want. > you can get in trouble if you recklessly leave around or provide alcohol/guns/cigarettes for a minor to start using You can only expect so much from individual responsibility. At some point you need to structure society to compensate for the inevitable failures that occur. > They are in a much better and informed position to do so than a creepy surveillance nanny state. I'd rather live in a nanny state than ever trust american parenting. We've demonstrated a million times over that that doesn't work and produces even more fucked up people and abused children.
• MoltenMan 8mo ago
  As somebody who is entirely for restrictions on internet / social media, I think you're missing the bigger picture here. First, you assume that parents have the technical knowhow to restrict their kids from specific sites. My parents used a lot of different tools when I was a kid, but between figuring out passwords, putting my fingerprint onto my mom's phone, and spoofing mac addresses, I always found a way around the restrictions so I could stay up later. But let's assume the majority of parents can actually do this. The problem with social media is not an individual one! We've fallen into a Nash Equilibrium, a game theory trap where we all defect and use our phones. If you don't have a phone or social media nowadays you will have much more trouble socializing than those who do, even though everyone would be better off if nobody used phones. As a teenager, you don't want to be the only one without a phone or social media. And so I truly do think the only solution is with higher level coordination. Now, it's possible that the government isn't the right organization to enforce this coordination. Unfortunately, we don't really have any other forms of community that work for this. People already get mad at HOA's for making them trim their lawn; imagine an HOA for blocking social media! I do think the idea of a community doing this would be great though, assuming (obviously) that it was easy to move on and out of, as well as local. This would also help adults! So to be honest, I don't think parents have the individual power to fix this, even with their kids.
• jackvalentine 8mo ago
  What is your proposed recourse for me as a parent if your kid shows my kid gore videos?
  • lII1lIlI11ll 8mo ago
    What is your recourse if his kid gives yours a bottle of whisky?
    • jackvalentine 8mo ago
      Young kids carrying whisky on the school grounds isn’t really a threat where I live. But to answer your question directly - kids having whisky and I can go after whoever sold/provided it to them using existing legal means if I think it serious enough.
• giroro 8mo ago
  If we expect Parents to treat Social Media like other unhealthy, dangerous, and highly addictive products, then that can never start with "just expect ignorant parents to all magically start doing something difficult, for no real reason". It starts by banning kids from the internet, entirely. It starts with putting age restrictions on who can buy internet connected devices. It starts by arresting parents and teachers who hand pre-literacy kids an always-online iPad. It starts with an overwhelming propaganda campaign: Posters, Commercials, After-School Specials, D.A.R.E. officers, red ribbon week. Then, ultimately, it still finishes with an age-gated internet where every adult is required to upload their extremely valuable personal information to for-profit companies, for free (With the added weight of being forced to agree to extreme ToS, like arbitration agreements). So what do we do? I agree that the age of entry to the internet should match other vices (currently 21+ in the US, although really that should probably be 18+)... It will never be acceptable for a single country's police state to extend across international borders, so... we just ban all of the UK and Australia from every web service until they get withdrawals and promise to stay nice? That could be a start. But this whole situation in like 'freedom of speech' once you start picking and choosing what counts as "acceptable" speech, then suddenly you lose everything. You literally can't make everyone happy, because everything subjective is open to contradiction - and because there are freaks in the world who will never be satisfied by anything less than a complete global ban of everything. Who gets a say? Do the Amish get to tell us what we are allowed to do? Where do you draw the line? You can't. Completely open is the only acceptable choice. But I still vote we start publicly mocking the parents who give their kids an ipad, and treat them like they just gave that kid a cigarette. Because seriously, they're ruining that kid.
  • cowboylowrez 8mo ago
    I've already thought about it from the US's perspective and here's my path forward. If government does not want kids to have access to the naughty bits of the internet but thinks there's something worth sharing with children then the government should provide a public internet for kids and THATS the site that will ask for a login known to belong to a kid. We already do public schooling with public funding and we do not let rando adults sit in classrooms with kids and they get a school id. Boot <18's off the public internet AT THE SOURCE when internet connectivity is PURCHASED / CONTRACTED FOR with a valid adult id / proof of age, but allow them vpn access into whatever the government thinks the child should have access to, like the schools page, I would say online encyclopedias or wikipedia type things but I'm not sure if government wants children to read about the variety of so many different things on this planet we're sorta trapped on and lets face it, restricting communications of the kids to points outside the control of parents is exactly what the government is complaining about, the government does not want kids to have free access to information. Think of a phone or tablet that can only access the network through either a proxy or vpn but otherwise locked down. It certainly seems like it doesn't require much programming, heck have trump vibe code it for all I care. I mean yeah, parents could just teach their kids the tough stuff because thats how it used to work anyways, well that and the libraries and schools but those can be pruned of bad books and bad teachers at the request of government anyways right? The kids could also be interviewed periodically by government to inventory what topics they have discussed with their parents to weed out the 't' or 'g' words. I mean yeah I don't see a place for facebook in that intranet but isn't that sort of the point, we all know big social media will be incentivised to promote engagement with less regard for safety, so why do kids need facebook anyways? The instagrams and ticktalks are worse although maybe government should make a child friendly ticktalk type school social network, call it trumps school for kids for all I care, folks in power right now and a significant part of the US believe that trump knows whats good for kids right? I mean obviously the libraries have to be REALLY REALLY cleaned up but thats just a detail. But why are parents forcing internet wierdos onto their kids with these smartphones / porno studios in their pockets? What do they think chester the molester on ticktalk is gonna have the kid upload their id? even if he does, do we really want that? c'mon man
• slumberlust 8mo ago
  The richest brightest minds of our generation all being motivated towards one addictive goal, and we'll just put the responsibility on the parents...I think society can collectively do better.
• thayne 8mo ago
  > then give parents strong monitoring and restriction tools and empower them to protect their children I think this is the right way to solve the problem. For example, I think websites should have a header or something that indicates a recommended age level, and what kinds of more mature content and interactions it has, so that filters can use that without having to use heuristics.
• CJefferson 8mo ago
  What? Are there billion dollar companies with huge staffs who are constantly trying to figure out how to sneak my child a gun all the time, at school, wherever they go? I'd say this comparison is good -- we as a society have decided that people who provide alcohol, guns, and cigarettes are responsible if children are provided them. You don't get to say 'hey, you didn't watch your child, they wandered into my shop, I sold to them 2 liters of vodka and a shotgun'.
• adamtaylor_13 8mo ago
  Children are clever. I think the deeper issue is that very few parents care enough to actually articulate the danger to their kids. As a kid, my dad sat me down and explained how porn could destroy my life. It's not hard to get people to act in their own self interest once they know what's destructive for them. The problem is that most parents don't even understand just how damaging social media is.