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Like it or not, there is a large constituency who wants to “protect the children”. By demonizing them and failing to engage with the worries over social media

Like it or not, there is a large constituency who wants to “protect the children”. By demonizing them and failing to engage with the worries over social media and pornography We have brought it on ourselves. Is it to be wondered at that many people are angry when tech companies have polluted the commons with their effluvium?

sicktriple 2mo ago
Fair play. This should 100% be viewed as a logical extension of that same effluvium. This is not a bug but a feature for them, many of these laws allow companies like Meta to offshore the responsibility of not harming children onto individuals while continuing to melt the brains of anyone unfortunate enough to still have a Facebook or Instagram account. edit: sp
an0malous 2mo ago
> Like it or not, there is a large constituency who wants to “protect the children”. Is there, though? The push is coming from lobbyists who seem to be largely funded by wealthy elites, corporations, and other opaque organizations. One of them seems to be Meta. It doesn’t look like a grassroots effort.
- inigyou 2mo ago
  It's voters who actually want to protect children and then tech offers something protecting-children-shaped to politicians.
josh_p 2mo ago
I agree with the other commenter who replied to you. I don’t think this comes from actual parents. And the article suggests this latest push is from right-leaning groups whose goals are surveillance and censorship. That said, I’m a father of 3. I’m a millennial and tech worker. I have the digital literacy to teach my kids about the internet and its horrors in a safe way. Not every parent does, so passing this off as a “parent better” issue doesn’t solve anything either. I dunno if you can legislate “better parental control ux”, but I’m open to similar ideas so parents can get some support without compromising on privacy.
- Gigachad 2mo ago
  We know what good UX is already from history. Movies for example have an age rating system that clearly lists the ages the movie is suitable for. If you look underage, you get asked to provide ID. Parents do not have the time or energy to configure modern parental controls which work more like tuning firewall rules. The other part of the problem is you need collective action, if you ban your child from Facebook, they won’t get invited to parties anymore. If all children get banned, the parties will be arranged over sms or some other non social media. As it is today, banning your kids from social media is overly punishing since all the other kids are using it.
  - josh_p 2mo ago
    That was my point though.. showing ID at the door doesn’t translate well to the Social Media landscape. If we actually cared about supporting children and parents as a country, parental controls and access, and making sure that systems were actually safe and protected privacy, would NOT be an afterthought.
- energy123 2mo ago
  > I don’t think this comes from actual parents. The polling I have seen from Germany and Australia of a social media ban for children was quite in favor of it. Sentiment here on HN and on Reddit was the polar opposite. We are in a bubble.
  - josh_p 2mo ago
    Okay, that's probably true.. I'm not trying to call everyone else voting for these things dumb, but does the average person who doesn't think about this stuff for a living actually know what they're voting for?
    - inigyou 2mo ago
      The average person cares less than you think and also assumes the implementation will be better than it will actually be.
judge2020 2mo ago
> By demonizing them and failing to engage with the worries over social media and pornography We have brought it on ourselves. There is a really good way to do this that solves most concerns: https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/technology/safety-security/opening-up-zero-knowledge-proof-technology-to-promote-privacy-in-age-assurance/ https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/technology/safety-secu... The only real downside to this is that a 0kp cannot be reliably tied to an identity of the person using the device and thus tickets could be proxied/shared around with semi technical tools (and/or an ai agent tasked with creating a proxy). This really isn't solvable without device-level attestation[0], as if a website needs to reliably say "this person is actually this person" then it needs all pieces of data itself. This could be solved by adding in a still privacy-preserving step like "The device is doing periodic face id scans and matching them to an identity, and constantly renews/re-presents to the age assurance consumer", but that has its own drawbacks[0]. 0: Namely, lock in to devices that can do this, and that includes basically guaranteeing a double digit percentage of adult humans would not have access due to their device being old, unsupported, missing the hardware, etc. And with so many humans excluded, you would not have mass adoption. Probably also excludes rooted devices if we bring in attestation of unmodified software.
- Aurornis 2mo ago
  It’s weird to see that locking down devices even further is being proposed as a solution to anything. The unspoken part of this requirement is that websites would have to block users who aren’t connecting via one of these attested, verified, locked down devices. There is the obvious loophole that using a VPN to a country without these requirements would circumvent it. That’s how kids are already circumventing age restrictions in places like Australia and it’s why the UK has taken an interest in attacking VPNs.
  - judge2020 2mo ago
    Locked down devices are kind of the only solution that both (A) preserves privacy and (B) solves the problem. However, it indeed strips a user of the freedom to use their device in the way that they want; although, safe to say that the US doesn't have all that much problem with that, given Apple's continued market dominance. The alternative is what we're getting right now: laws that require verifying ID documents, often in ways that restrict even the notion of maintaining the user's privacy. Attestation might be an "OK" to "good" solution while this is between bad and really bad.
ColdStream 2mo ago
This is the flow back from the idea of 'information wants to be free'. In letting things flow to easily the opposition is to have heavy lock down on information. A lot of the time, the opposite of one bad idea is another bad idea.
onetimeusename 2mo ago
Perhaps but we have a problem globally where NGOs can mask nasty politics inside of faux charity.
- ColdStream 2mo ago
  Most tasty actions in this world always hide behind a claim to virtue.
txrx0000 2mo ago
Big tech companies aside, the broader tech community did not fail to engage on the digital parenting problem. We could've solved this problem long ago before anyone even noticed it, but we're actively being blocked from doing so by the exact same people pushing for mass surveillance. See detailed explanation here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49118578 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49118578
iamnothere 2mo ago
There is a term for this: a moral panic. Believe it or not, sometimes the best answer is to do nothing until the crowd moves on to the next panic, as with the “Satanic Panic” in the 1980s. Turns out D&D was not actually a gateway to Satan worship.
- judge2020 2mo ago
  Laws are actually being written though to clamp down on non-id-verified internet browsing. No laws came out of the moral panic of the 1980s.
  - iamnothere 2mo ago
    Right, I’m saying there shouldn’t be such laws.
- gorgoiler 2mo ago
  If we’re talking 80s, a better comparison would be He-Man. The FTC let the free-market run riot with children’s TV. Shows used commercials to push expensive plastic toys. The shows themselves became commercials for their associated product lines. Parents felt unable to resist the social pressure channeled through their children and congress eventually passed an act that let the FCC reign in the FTC’s damage. In the 2020s family economics has raced to the bottom: wages have stagnated, the cost of goods and services is set based on a household where everyone is in full time employment, and latch-key kids now have He-Man in the palm of their hands courtesy of Apple, Google, Samsung, and Xiomai. This situation is ripe for exploitation by anyone who can offer parents a solution to their kids’ insatiable phone addiction.
  - inigyou 2mo ago
    Unrelated, but He-Man is the funniest name ever, and I can't wait for the gender roles people to come out with some series called He-Man and She-Woman.
    - Cthulhu_ 2mo ago
chr15m 2mo ago
The only constituency who matters is their parents and guardians. If parenting and guardianship is failing, then help them be better.
deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
vaylian 2mo ago
> Like it or not, there is a large constituency who wants to “protect the children”. The problem is not that they want to protect children. The problem is that these people are either technically clueless or deceptive which is why they present these surveillance measures as the only reasonable approach.
Cthulhu_ 2mo ago
Why yes, I too want to "protect the children". But that shouldn't require me to upload my ID to a vague 3rd party to prove my age so I can browse reddit or steam. I believe most online services should have safeguards to protect children because they will actively seek out harmful content and contacts (don't ask me how I know). But these safeguards should not allow for abuse of their users, or accidental info leaks, or sharing of PII to 1st or 3rd parties. There's plenty of ways to do e.g. age or identity verification anonymously and securely, for example.

sicktriple 2mo ago

Fair play. This should 100% be viewed as a logical extension of that same effluvium. This is not a bug but a feature for them, many of these laws allow companies like Meta to offshore the responsibility of not harming children onto individuals while continuing to melt the brains of anyone unfortunate enough to still have a Facebook or Instagram account. edit: sp

an0malous 2mo ago

> Like it or not, there is a large constituency who wants to “protect the children”. Is there, though? The push is coming from lobbyists who seem to be largely funded by wealthy elites, corporations, and other opaque organizations. One of them seems to be Meta. It doesn’t look like a grassroots effort.

inigyou 2mo ago
It's voters who actually want to protect children and then tech offers something protecting-children-shaped to politicians.

josh_p 2mo ago

I agree with the other commenter who replied to you. I don’t think this comes from actual parents. And the article suggests this latest push is from right-leaning groups whose goals are surveillance and censorship. That said, I’m a father of 3. I’m a millennial and tech worker. I have the digital literacy to teach my kids about the internet and its horrors in a safe way. Not every parent does, so passing this off as a “parent better” issue doesn’t solve anything either. I dunno if you can legislate “better parental control ux”, but I’m open to similar ideas so parents can get some support without compromising on privacy.

Gigachad 2mo ago
We know what good UX is already from history. Movies for example have an age rating system that clearly lists the ages the movie is suitable for. If you look underage, you get asked to provide ID. Parents do not have the time or energy to configure modern parental controls which work more like tuning firewall rules. The other part of the problem is you need collective action, if you ban your child from Facebook, they won’t get invited to parties anymore. If all children get banned, the parties will be arranged over sms or some other non social media. As it is today, banning your kids from social media is overly punishing since all the other kids are using it.
- josh_p 2mo ago
  That was my point though.. showing ID at the door doesn’t translate well to the Social Media landscape. If we actually cared about supporting children and parents as a country, parental controls and access, and making sure that systems were actually safe and protected privacy, would NOT be an afterthought.
energy123 2mo ago
> I don’t think this comes from actual parents. The polling I have seen from Germany and Australia of a social media ban for children was quite in favor of it. Sentiment here on HN and on Reddit was the polar opposite. We are in a bubble.
- josh_p 2mo ago
  Okay, that's probably true.. I'm not trying to call everyone else voting for these things dumb, but does the average person who doesn't think about this stuff for a living actually know what they're voting for?
  - inigyou 2mo ago
    The average person cares less than you think and also assumes the implementation will be better than it will actually be.

judge2020 2mo ago

> By demonizing them and failing to engage with the worries over social media and pornography We have brought it on ourselves. There is a really good way to do this that solves most concerns: https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/technology/safety-security/opening-up-zero-knowledge-proof-technology-to-promote-privacy-in-age-assurance/ https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/technology/safety-secu... The only real downside to this is that a 0kp cannot be reliably tied to an identity of the person using the device and thus tickets could be proxied/shared around with semi technical tools (and/or an ai agent tasked with creating a proxy). This really isn't solvable without device-level attestation[0], as if a website needs to reliably say "this person is actually this person" then it needs all pieces of data itself. This could be solved by adding in a still privacy-preserving step like "The device is doing periodic face id scans and matching them to an identity, and constantly renews/re-presents to the age assurance consumer", but that has its own drawbacks[0]. 0: Namely, lock in to devices that can do this, and that includes basically guaranteeing a double digit percentage of adult humans would not have access due to their device being old, unsupported, missing the hardware, etc. And with so many humans excluded, you would not have mass adoption. Probably also excludes rooted devices if we bring in attestation of unmodified software.

Aurornis 2mo ago
It’s weird to see that locking down devices even further is being proposed as a solution to anything. The unspoken part of this requirement is that websites would have to block users who aren’t connecting via one of these attested, verified, locked down devices. There is the obvious loophole that using a VPN to a country without these requirements would circumvent it. That’s how kids are already circumventing age restrictions in places like Australia and it’s why the UK has taken an interest in attacking VPNs.
- judge2020 2mo ago
  Locked down devices are kind of the only solution that both (A) preserves privacy and (B) solves the problem. However, it indeed strips a user of the freedom to use their device in the way that they want; although, safe to say that the US doesn't have all that much problem with that, given Apple's continued market dominance. The alternative is what we're getting right now: laws that require verifying ID documents, often in ways that restrict even the notion of maintaining the user's privacy. Attestation might be an "OK" to "good" solution while this is between bad and really bad.

ColdStream 2mo ago

This is the flow back from the idea of 'information wants to be free'. In letting things flow to easily the opposition is to have heavy lock down on information. A lot of the time, the opposite of one bad idea is another bad idea.

onetimeusename 2mo ago

Perhaps but we have a problem globally where NGOs can mask nasty politics inside of faux charity.

ColdStream 2mo ago
Most tasty actions in this world always hide behind a claim to virtue.

txrx0000 2mo ago

Big tech companies aside, the broader tech community did not fail to engage on the digital parenting problem. We could've solved this problem long ago before anyone even noticed it, but we're actively being blocked from doing so by the exact same people pushing for mass surveillance. See detailed explanation here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49118578 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49118578

iamnothere 2mo ago

There is a term for this: a moral panic. Believe it or not, sometimes the best answer is to do nothing until the crowd moves on to the next panic, as with the “Satanic Panic” in the 1980s. Turns out D&D was not actually a gateway to Satan worship.

judge2020 2mo ago
Laws are actually being written though to clamp down on non-id-verified internet browsing. No laws came out of the moral panic of the 1980s.
- iamnothere 2mo ago
  Right, I’m saying there shouldn’t be such laws.
gorgoiler 2mo ago
If we’re talking 80s, a better comparison would be He-Man. The FTC let the free-market run riot with children’s TV. Shows used commercials to push expensive plastic toys. The shows themselves became commercials for their associated product lines. Parents felt unable to resist the social pressure channeled through their children and congress eventually passed an act that let the FCC reign in the FTC’s damage. In the 2020s family economics has raced to the bottom: wages have stagnated, the cost of goods and services is set based on a household where everyone is in full time employment, and latch-key kids now have He-Man in the palm of their hands courtesy of Apple, Google, Samsung, and Xiomai. This situation is ripe for exploitation by anyone who can offer parents a solution to their kids’ insatiable phone addiction.
- inigyou 2mo ago
  Unrelated, but He-Man is the funniest name ever, and I can't wait for the gender roles people to come out with some series called He-Man and She-Woman.
  - Cthulhu_ 2mo ago

chr15m 2mo ago

The only constituency who matters is their parents and guardians. If parenting and guardianship is failing, then help them be better.

deleted 2mo ago

[deleted]

vaylian 2mo ago

> Like it or not, there is a large constituency who wants to “protect the children”. The problem is not that they want to protect children. The problem is that these people are either technically clueless or deceptive which is why they present these surveillance measures as the only reasonable approach.

Cthulhu_ 2mo ago

Why yes, I too want to "protect the children". But that shouldn't require me to upload my ID to a vague 3rd party to prove my age so I can browse reddit or steam. I believe most online services should have safeguards to protect children because they will actively seek out harmful content and contacts (don't ask me how I know). But these safeguards should not allow for abuse of their users, or accidental info leaks, or sharing of PII to 1st or 3rd parties. There's plenty of ways to do e.g. age or identity verification anonymously and securely, for example.