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Comment by floatingatoll | Hacker News Reader

The missing “principled distinction” is tied up in the user interface design choices that intersect with child safety concerns, even if equal content is presented to both means. Voice search and response has a very different intersection with child safety concerns than keyboard-browser search and response.

A voice assistant can be reasonably expected to be operated by a very young child, who would be responsive and trusting to verbal commands in an adult-like voice from it.

A keyboard computer with a search engine in a browser cannot reasonably be expected to be operated by a very young child, and would not be reasonably expected to issue spoken-verbal commands in response to queries.

The information content is a relevant factor in the former case but not the latter; keyboard use of search engines is not in-scope for evaluating the child safety risk of voice assistants, though it is certainly an interesting topic as well.

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The child in question is 10, right? It doesn't sound credible that a 10-year-old child could not operate a search engine.

Whether or not a child is at risk from a browser search and result is not relevant to whether or not a child is at risk from a voice assistant search and result.

They are separate concerns and considering the browser case does not nullify the necessity of considering the voice assistant case.

For example, replace “10-year-old” with “3-year-old” (a simple and effective safety test for potential threat to children) and apply that test to both devices:

A) Could a 3-year-old child be reasonably expected to operate a keyboard-browser search and result interface? Could they be placed into danger by doing so?

B) Could a 3-year-old child be reasonably expected operate a voice assistant search and result interface? Could they be placed into danger by doing so?

The answers to A and B are not the same, because the threat models (to the child) are very different when “can read and type” is not taken for granted, as is implied for a 10-year-old. This is why the US has a safety commission to consider these things: common sense can hide critical threats to children that are invisible and unrecognized by well-meaning adults.

Good thing Amazon have never specifically marketed Alexa devices for kids.

Oh, wait.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNdZAgij-K0

The question of the day for that video will end up being:

“In what ways do they restrict the available voice commands and results to protect children?”

And I bet it will be found that their interface allows never-reviewed-by-Amazon content to be read out loud to children, because Amazon loves to externalize human costs.

The issue is that Alexa stripped important safety information out when summarizing the result. If a search engine does something similar (such as Google with their answers), I see no reason why the search engine shouldn't be reported the same way Alexa should be.

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