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Comment by cronix | Hacker News Reader

> install it on their children's phones without consent

That's a curious phrasing. Are you implying a parent needs consent from their minor child to install something, anything they deem appropriate, on "their" phone?

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I'm not the person you were replying to, but yes. That would be an extreme breach of trust and especially with the level of detail that's being collected here, effectively removing all privacy, it's just not ok. This could have disastrous consequences for ex. closeted LGBTQ+ youth with unsupportive parents who could kick them out of the house or worse if they found out.

Not to mention how socially alienating it would be to have this on your phone- who wants to text the person whose parents listen in to every conversation they have?

There's nothing immoral about it if the parent is up front with the child, the child knows the device is monitored. If they don't want to be monitored, then they don't get the device. I know for a fact once my kids are older not a packet will leave my house without getting snooped at least by a parent controls filter. I'm sure they'll find ways around it (as I did as a technical child) but kids need to be protected from devices and the internet just as much as they need to have access. There is a great deal of harmful and damaging content - social media being the least of it in many ways. If a kid feels they need to hide something as meaningful as issues about sexuality (which I do understand is common) from their parents, the issue is not the filters, it's the relationship, and the solution isn't to give the minor free reign to choose to use the internet unabated according to their own wisdom. Once they're an adult, fine. I guess there are just extremely different views on parental authority today.

The position being put forth here is frankly rather horrific and abusive, and on multiple levels. Normally I'd aim to provide a more substantive response, but I'm not even sure where to begin.

I find the idea of snooping horrific and yet strangely find myself agreeing with the parent, because it may be the lesser of two evils at this point. So much of what's online and what can happen to a kid online is even more horrific. FWIW, I don't have kids, so I'm not sure what I'd do. But I know I had my first sex chat on IRC when I was 12, in the dialup days, and it could have gone pretty badly if I hadn't been paranoid enough not to give out my phone number or address to the "14 year old girl" I was chatting with. Things are much, much, much worse now.

I would feel deeply uncomfortable if a parent (or anyone, really) were able to essentially listen in on every conversation I have. A tool that goes this far with monitoring really needs to be installed with consent from all parties.

This kind of software is not used by people in healthy relationships.

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