I mean, I hate this age validation as much as everyone else, curbing advertising to impressionable kids doesn't sound too stupid to me...
There's some stuff we can do with content that is targeted at kids, I don't think those laws are inherently bad. Although... last time we tried to expand laws around advertising in content directed toward kids, that resulted in a huge number of game streamers and animators getting demonetized, to the point where Youtubers were doing wild things like swearing more in their videos so they could prove that they weren't targeted at kids. We seem to have a lot of difficulty articulating legally what the difference is between "kid appropriate" and "kid targeted" is, particularly when it comes to stuff like video games or "wholesome" (for lack of a better word) content.
To me, it's very much a "who's going to bell the cat" policy. I don't want kids to be subjected to so much advertising, it's a great policy. In theory. But I have not so far seen any practical implementations of age restrictions online that haven't either been completely worthless or really problematic for both privacy and free expression.
And perhaps it shouldn't; America's prudeness around sex but glorification of violence has had an effect around the world through Hollywood for years. Adding that morality to the flow of information might not be what we want.
Also, there’s much more content on YouTube that most parents would absolutely not want their kids seeing than a battlefield trailer.
My exploration online was effectively unrestricted while I was growing up. The internet had far more objectionable content back then that was easily accessible. I don't feel that it had any real negative effect on me. Why would I worry myself sick over my kids seeing it?
Also, even if there is more objectionable content than a Battlefield trailer, the Battlefield trailer is restricted by the same rules. And if everyone else in your kids' friend group is talking about Battlefield then you'd be excluding your kid from it by limiting access to that. And if you don't limit access to it, then you get all the other 'objectionable' content too.
If you legally require Google to act like a parent, they have to do it to everyone.
Personally i think age verification is good. This implementation is moronic, though. And all around it's very, very difficult. So difficult that it may never be useful.
We absolutely should. Thankfully it is already not enforced in a lot of places (such as in greece).
What should I do? Not allowing my kids access to the internet at all is a non-answer in 2020. Hell it was a non-answer in 1995.
So how does this help, anyway?
It'd be nice to be able to turn them loose on a YouTube that was just educational videos I've curated, no weird toy unboxing shit, without having to, like, maintain my own file server and streaming service.
Why not? Doesn't take that much to downlod the videos and let them watch locally - we are in a thread about youtube-dl after all.
Or anything else that doesn't fuck with my ability not to be tracked by google.
And a lot of what they want to watch is formally not for kids and you will be absolutely ok with them seeing it. Especially non English content.
And it's all in the name of "protecting" children. This isn't some future hypothetical - it has already happened. I've been barred from a whole slew of content on YouTube because of this.
Right now it's only used by Google. It's likely that in the future most websites will use this, because it's government regulation.
I don't see this as any different than a theater asking to see your ID before letting your buy an R rated movie ticket. I sympathize that it's annoying hell but you probably also don't want Google deciding for themselves what your age is.
The real answer is the behemoths are going to become irrelevant, being inescapably bound to government control and surveillance capitalism. The more hoops and restrictions they add, the more tech people will move to decentralized solutions that don't suffer such bullshit, and eventually the normies will follow. It's just a tragic end to the past few decades of revolutionary energy, pointlessly wasted on centralized dead ends. And in the short term, it's fucking frustrating when trying to get anything done.
If you want to control what your kids see, don't let them have internet access. This is simply reality. I know that from the time I got internet access, I began to see things that would horrify my parents on a semi-regular basis that they didn't know about. (I had an SA forums account.)
Libraries do restrict the materials that can be checked out by minors and I doubt that counted as supplanting parenting. How else could you give your kid any level of independence without the cooperation of other people?
You should control your kids device and make restrictions there, not place them by default on the entire internet.
Because one thing is sure: your kid WILL see it all because it's 2021.
I mean seriously...you're not closing off all lakes because some kids could drown in them. You teach them how to swim.
> What should I do? Not allowing my kids access to the internet at all is a non-answer in 2020. Hell it was a non-answer in 1995.
A non-answer is not allowing everyone else to surf the web without giving their credit card or ID to every website that hosts adult content. It would have a huge impact on privacy of the users and the freedom of the whole internet in general.
A parent should educate their children, but I know that is simpler to set a bunch of restriction, give to the children a computer, and let him sit hours in front of YouTube while you do something else.
Not all parents agree that this is the right thing to do.
And if you didn't know, children will eventually start using computers by themselves, probably before they are 12 (probably in first grade or kindergarten, I wouldn't be surprised). A huge portion of internet users are children. That's a fact. The reality is that a huge portion of children are online, and advertisers are specifically targeting children on youtube.