4 ms·

And instead of an age you could even make the indication about what is potentially objectionable so that parents can choose when to allow their kids to see what

And instead of an age you could even make the indication about what is potentially objectionable so that parents can choose when to allow their kids to see what - and adults can also choose to avoid certain things.

iamnothere 3mo ago
Exactly, without this you’re handing the power to decide what is “appropriate” to someone else.
- godelski 3mo ago
  > you’re handing the power to The user?
  - johnnyanmac 3mo ago
    The server owner. If your parent won't curate the content, they will.
  - iamnothere 3mo ago
    I’m in favor of voluntarily giving the user (device owner) full control over what categories of content they want to allow. Age buckets don’t do that. (This includes giving the option for “everything is allowed” without any kind of verification. You bought it, you own it.)
- codedokode 3mo ago
  No, you are handling the boring work to someone else. Most non-geek people, I assume, are not interesting in manually configuring the website white lists, so there should be a single "child mode" checkbox for 99% of population and "configure" for the rest of us.
LelouBil 3mo ago
Force a PEGI-like system for every apps please. It would be awesome.
- dredmorbius 3mo ago
  PEGI: Pan-European Game Information, a video game content rating system. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PEGI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PEGI>
- Marsymars 3mo ago
  The App/Play stores already basically have that, you can't submit apps without age ratings. One spot where it's a bit weird is for utility apps that don't have any "mature" content but that obviously isn't intended for kids, so e.g. your tax prep app gets rated as "Ages 4+".
  - LelouBil 3mo ago
    Yes, that's why the system should be a bit different. It should indicate notable features that influence the rating, like PEGI includes "online content" "gambling" and so on
  - giantg2 3mo ago
    Is exposure to a tax app going to cause harm to a 5yo? This doesn't seem like a real problem.
  - codedokode 3mo ago
    There is nothing wrong if a teenager wants to know more about taxes. Although exposure to tax rates might cause a slight emotional trauma.
1dom 3mo ago
I might be being overly cynical here, but I think part of the problem is parents expect to give their kids the internet so they don't have to spend so much time/attention with them. I think this means any solution which involves active parent participation is going to get shunned by a vocal subset. I'm in my mid 30's. When I was very young I remember my Dad semi-regularly having to email or even fax off permission slips to websites aimed at kids before they would create an account for me.
- forshaper 3mo ago
  It's what I see happening. None of this would be a big deal if parents were present, but we give our attention to work & entertainment, and find it easier to continue doing that if the kids are also being entertained instead of playing, which caused problems in the physical world.
- thewebguyd 3mo ago
  > any solution which involves active parent participation is going to get shunned by a vocal subset Then we certainly shouldn't be passing laws mandating age verification. If parents want to abdicate their responsibility over their children, it's not the role of government to enshrine that abdication into law and take over the duty of parenting from them. If regulation is to be had, then it should take the form of mandating websites and services provide privacy preserving tools for parents to use, if they want to use them. If they don't, that's on them. Everyone else needn't suffer because a subset of the population has chosen to offload their responsibility into the government and web services.
- DSMan195276 3mo ago
  > I might be being overly cynical here, but I think part of the problem is parents expect to give their kids the internet so they don't have to spend so much time/attention with them. > I think this means any solution which involves active parent participation is going to get shunned by a vocal subset. I don't think that's a fair assessment personally, rather you've missed a key detail that things are significantly more complicated than they used to be, it's not just an 'effort' issue. There is no universal "user is age X" setting that applies to everything everywhere, rather everything has a different system and pretty much all of them are terrible in various different ways. I'm very tech savvy and I still struggled just to set up a Microsoft/XBox account for my daughter so that we could play some computer games together. Access to all the different age rating settings is spread across something like three different apps and websites and in my experience they don't even all work consistently. That experience is also not dissimilar from the experience with other types of accounts. For people I know who are less tech savvy it honestly doesn't matter how much time they put into it, eventually they give up and turn off age ratings because something isn't work and even if there's a solution it would take them hours to figure out. Point being, if the existing tools were much better I don't think we would be having this kind of conversation.

iamnothere 3mo ago

Exactly, without this you’re handing the power to decide what is “appropriate” to someone else.

godelski 3mo ago
> you’re handing the power to The user?
- johnnyanmac 3mo ago
  The server owner. If your parent won't curate the content, they will.
- iamnothere 3mo ago
  I’m in favor of voluntarily giving the user (device owner) full control over what categories of content they want to allow. Age buckets don’t do that. (This includes giving the option for “everything is allowed” without any kind of verification. You bought it, you own it.)
codedokode 3mo ago
No, you are handling the boring work to someone else. Most non-geek people, I assume, are not interesting in manually configuring the website white lists, so there should be a single "child mode" checkbox for 99% of population and "configure" for the rest of us.

LelouBil 3mo ago

Force a PEGI-like system for every apps please. It would be awesome.

dredmorbius 3mo ago
PEGI: Pan-European Game Information, a video game content rating system. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PEGI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PEGI>
Marsymars 3mo ago
The App/Play stores already basically have that, you can't submit apps without age ratings. One spot where it's a bit weird is for utility apps that don't have any "mature" content but that obviously isn't intended for kids, so e.g. your tax prep app gets rated as "Ages 4+".
- LelouBil 3mo ago
  Yes, that's why the system should be a bit different. It should indicate notable features that influence the rating, like PEGI includes "online content" "gambling" and so on
- giantg2 3mo ago
  Is exposure to a tax app going to cause harm to a 5yo? This doesn't seem like a real problem.
- codedokode 3mo ago
  There is nothing wrong if a teenager wants to know more about taxes. Although exposure to tax rates might cause a slight emotional trauma.

1dom 3mo ago

I might be being overly cynical here, but I think part of the problem is parents expect to give their kids the internet so they don't have to spend so much time/attention with them. I think this means any solution which involves active parent participation is going to get shunned by a vocal subset. I'm in my mid 30's. When I was very young I remember my Dad semi-regularly having to email or even fax off permission slips to websites aimed at kids before they would create an account for me.

forshaper 3mo ago
It's what I see happening. None of this would be a big deal if parents were present, but we give our attention to work & entertainment, and find it easier to continue doing that if the kids are also being entertained instead of playing, which caused problems in the physical world.
thewebguyd 3mo ago
> any solution which involves active parent participation is going to get shunned by a vocal subset Then we certainly shouldn't be passing laws mandating age verification. If parents want to abdicate their responsibility over their children, it's not the role of government to enshrine that abdication into law and take over the duty of parenting from them. If regulation is to be had, then it should take the form of mandating websites and services provide privacy preserving tools for parents to use, if they want to use them. If they don't, that's on them. Everyone else needn't suffer because a subset of the population has chosen to offload their responsibility into the government and web services.
DSMan195276 3mo ago
> I might be being overly cynical here, but I think part of the problem is parents expect to give their kids the internet so they don't have to spend so much time/attention with them. > I think this means any solution which involves active parent participation is going to get shunned by a vocal subset. I don't think that's a fair assessment personally, rather you've missed a key detail that things are significantly more complicated than they used to be, it's not just an 'effort' issue. There is no universal "user is age X" setting that applies to everything everywhere, rather everything has a different system and pretty much all of them are terrible in various different ways. I'm very tech savvy and I still struggled just to set up a Microsoft/XBox account for my daughter so that we could play some computer games together. Access to all the different age rating settings is spread across something like three different apps and websites and in my experience they don't even all work consistently. That experience is also not dissimilar from the experience with other types of accounts. For people I know who are less tech savvy it honestly doesn't matter how much time they put into it, eventually they give up and turn off age ratings because something isn't work and even if there's a solution it would take them hours to figure out. Point being, if the existing tools were much better I don't think we would be having this kind of conversation.