Examining Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act compliance [pdf] | Hacker News Reader

Examining Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act compliance [pdf]

petsymposium.org

25 pointsoptimusrex7 comments

The sentiment behind COPPA is understandable, but the practical logistics never made sense to me. It basically makes every website that has any kind of account feature add a box that says "Are you over 13?" and if you click "No," then you get redirected to a page that says "Sorry you can't use this website" or a search engine.

So it takes about two seconds for a kid to realize, "Hey, if I tell the truth, I can't use this website. But if I lie about my age, I'll get in and nobody'll be the wiser."

Maybe it works for babies, but I'm pretty sure kids are smart enough to figure out how to get past it by the time they're 7 or 8.

Imagine the children can't read the book for age restriction so they can't learn a new things, or they can't write a letter or make a phone call for age restriction so they can't inform the world they are abused. There is no human right for the children.

The book publishers, the paper letter manufacturers, or telephone company has no obligation for the cause of book-reading, letter-writing or phone-calling by the children.

But it happens for the medium of computer and the Internet.

Because, we failed to decentralize the computer and the Internet, most of the computations currently requires the aid of remote servers from commercial entities and they act according to the incentives.

The children doesn't pay much and so many laws make them responsible for the cause of children reading books, writing letters, making a phone call IF the medium is the computer and the Internet.

So banning the children from using the web service is the cheapest solution for the Web service providers.

The result is, the children can't read book, write letters, or making a phone call.

We're heading straight to the dystopia where there is no human right for the children.

Who's to say?, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions".

This is a general HN policy question.

When I first opened this post it was a link to the Gizmodo article talking about the study. It, in turn, linked to the Endgadget article and the source PDF. Why was this HN post hijacked to remove the Gizmodo, and by extension Endgaget, article(s) and point directly to the PDF instead? Is there no value in the content of those two articles reporting on the study?

HN Guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Section "In Submissions," third paragraph:

  Please submit the original source. If a post reports on
  something found on another site, submit the latter.

I don't know about the particular links in this specific context, but in general many "science news" articles tend to have low or no value added (in some cases negative, if they mislead or distort). HN prefers discussion center around the study itself, not on some journalist's opinions or summary of the study.

There are exceptions, this is a broad over-generalization, I don't speak for HN, etc.

I this case it went from a link I would click and then perhaps choose to D/L the PDF, to a link I won't knowingly click since it's a direct PDF link. So, while I understand the reasoning, I disagree with it's application in this instance.

My original post was the Gizmodo article, but it seems a moderator updated the link to point the the PDF. I have no problem linking to the actual study.

Here is the original link with some opinion and commentary.

https://gizmodo.com/researchers-conclude-googles-play-store-...

HN prefers linking to primary sources and using original titles.

It can be a little frustrating sometimes, particularly if the original title is vague or non-descriptive (e.g. "My Next Journey" instead of the more informative "Blah blah Steps Down as CEO of _____"), and if a different article provides a particularly juicy tidbit or summary of the article.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com