This is parents’ job, not Google’s.
If you legally require Google to act like a parent, they have to do it to everyone.
If you legally require Google to act like a parent, they have to do it to everyone.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Or anything else that doesn't fuck with my ability not to be tracked by google.
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).