3 ms·
No, this technical implementation is straightforwardly bad. The information flow and point of decision making are completely backwards as the bill was written b
by mindslight 6mo ago
No, this technical implementation is straightforwardly bad. The information flow and point of decision making are completely backwards as the bill was written by Facebook/Meta purely to absolve themselves of liability and foist it into others, including onto parents themselves!
The right way to facilitate parental controls with legislation is to put a requirement on service providers [over a certain number of users] to publish well-known tags stating the age suitability of their site/app/pages. Then put a requirement on mass-market device manufacturers [over a certain size] to include parental control software that can filter based on these tags. When parental controls are enabled on a device, any site/app without tags "fails closed" and doesn't display - meaning the open web and open devices continue to coexist with the tag system.
The key parts 1. the information signals flow the correct way, from the company with a well-known identity to the end-users' device where it can be acted upon per the device owner's desires 2. the legal liability lands in the right place - tags signify legal representations of the suitability of content and 3. the long tail of small-scale websites and devices are completely unaffected
This would also leave the makers of parental control software (bundled with device or third-party aftermarket) free to implement additional features that parents desire (eg block social media, even if the site says it's fine for <18), rather than leaving those decisions entirely in the hands of corporate lawyers (as this bill does, because once again it was written by Facebook/Meta).