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Well, the keyword here is "responsible parenting". The child has to understand that the restrictions come from you, and not from the computer. This means watching the screen together, and not relying on a fallible automated system.

Breaking SSL is not the answer for one more reason: with more and more web apps (cannot say "websites") relying on JavaScript-only content delivery, long polling, websockets, server-sent events, and who knows what else, there are less and less standards. Earlier, such nanny software worked because everything was text and HTML, and it is known how to stop bad things in these content types. Nowadays, we can't just block replies, because we have to substitute some dummy JSON (or whatever) instead, so that the app doesn't crash or hang - and such dummy replacement of the blocked content is application-specific.

Also, think about today's children, they are tomorrow's politicians: now you deploy an automated system that breaks the internet for them, tomorrow they will deploy an automated system that will deny access for you to anything published by the opposition.

I think that you are looking for a technological solution to a non technological problem, even if there was no encryption at all there is no way to 100% inspect all of your kids communications. The same way there is no way to follow them and watch them 100% of the time in the real world. The only thing you can do is educate your kid about these issues and trust them.

> When I grew up the content of that sort was significantly more limited, i.e. occasional porn GIFs, most fine erotic material, but nothing of the extreme sort you could easily stumble upon by just being online today

You must have lived a sheltered life as a child. As soon an VHS tapes came around in the late 70's and my family got a player, I was exposed to all kinds of crap- rape porn, bestiality, snuff films, white power propaganda, etc. You name it, and we'd trade the tapes as kids. Sure it's a lot more convenient now, but it was all around back then.

I've taken the approach that I'd never be able to stop my curious child from seeing nasty stuff online, no matter how hard I try. The best thing I can do is educate and provide context. I explained pretty early on to my son that he has to be careful what he looks for online, because he'll find it. Now at 15 years old, he tells me, "you wouldn't believe the shit out there, it's disgusting." Exactly.

> You must have lived a sheltered life as a child. As soon an VHS tapes came around in the late 70's and my family got a player, I was exposed to all kinds of crap- rape porn, bestiality, snuff films, white power propaganda, etc. You name it, and we'd trade the tapes as kids. Sure it's a lot more convenient now, but it was all around back then.

It was, but wasn't. I never saw porn on VHS, nor did I have a sheltered life. It wasn't until I was 15, last year of secondary school was when I saw porn round a pals house.

My parent's were not the parents who were in to such content so there was never any of that in possession. True, it has always existed but regardless it can be damaging to a child.

The thing is there are counter examples where, in my opinion on moral grounds, a child is entitled to privacy. Some examples on off the top of my head:-

* An LGBT child using LGBT safe spaces online. Being outed before a child has come to terms with their feelings themselves can be horrendous for their mental wellbeing, even in an understanding household. In less LGBT friendly households it could be extremely dangerous.

* An abuser is part of their family and trying to communicate that to teachers, authorities or whoever else.

Of course you are right to be concerned for your child, and age/maturity is really critical in this discussion. A 4 year old clearly shouldn't have unfettered access to the internet. Should a 15 year old who has shown they can be trusted be forced to have their parent view everything they do? I'm not sure.

The problem with porn doesn't really come from accidental exposure to particularly 'extreme' material, I think. That might just be a start. The core problem is, for young people (adolescents) and adults alike, the deliberate search for porn (with hormone-fueled determination, it'll get around technical hurdles) as part of an addictive pattern of behaviour. To counter that, there's no substitute for voluntarily and consciously avoiding it. This may be helped by education: knowing why it's bad, and also knowing why it seems appealing, i.e. sex education and basic addiction psychology, as well as knowledge of the other porn-associated problems as informed by one's broader moral framework. Good luck.

>pornography and perversion that percolates into the mainstream life via innocent channels - manga, anime, Reddit, and so on

I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, but it's interesting how manga/anime is invoked in these discussions, often unintentionally or even unknowingly recalling the image of 'weird Japan', a supposed hotbed of child abuse and perversion, where no material, much less anime and manga are safe for Western eyes, supposedly more moral and discerning.

I recently read a paper about this kind of discourse, in which the authors pointed out, quite rightly in my judgement, that the popularity of such readings in the mainstream Western press projects a certain idea of fiction and its relationship with reality which is not shared by many in Japan, and certainly not by the consumers of this 'pornography and perversion' according to ethnographic research on their opinions and perceptions.

Second is the idea of 'stumbling' upon porn. Some people even class Neon Genesis Evangelion as 'perversion' in its own right, and recently in the US, portrayals of adolescent sexuality in stories and books, which some lawmakers are trying to remove from libraries. I'm of the opinion that the sparation isn't nearly that easy. Teenagers writing Harry Potter slash fanfiction is a far cry away from Blender animated monster porn, and a fannish teenager or younger will have a greater interest in the former.

Consider just how well moderated most Internet communities are. The chance of seeing porn (as opposed to the anime equivalent of a very softcore porn gif) on r/all, or even r/anime is slim. A child is much more likely to 'stumble' accross it if a friend they know in real life sent it to them through Discord. The only other place I can really think of a child 'stumbling' in a zone meant for children would be Twitter, but then we're talking about Twitter, not 'reddit', 'anime', or 'manga'. In other words, I'm saying that just because the material exists, it doesn't mean it's innocently 'stumbled' upon by a wide-eyed child. Children get curious, especially when you tell them not to do something, or society provides that narrative.

Ah the horror. Ever tried actually talking to the kid? You guys didn't run around the neighborhood doing random shit when you were young? Were your parents horrified by what allowing you to roam without supervision may lead to?

If watching some weirdo porn was enough to mentally damage people, the world would look quite different.

Your problem is not that the kids can't be protected with encryption, but rather that you want way too much control over these kids' lives. I know you think you are protecting them, but it is much better for a child's development to simply be told and explained how the world works. Also porn. Anyone who believes that they can hide everything from a child until they are of age and that they will always act in a wise manner after they are of age is naive.

Childen watching gore on liveleak, girls looking at anorexia inspiration and boys getting into extremist ideals are not really good for their development, and these resources don't "simply tell" how the world works. In fact, it's the opposite: they construct a desirable narrative that supplants interacting with the real world, they enclose someone instead of opening them up. It's a parent's job to ward off bad influence from their children, whom are not equipped with dealing with such stimuli. Maybe not even the parent is equipped. It's not a matter of hiding and controlling children, it's about not letting other abusive people raise your children instead of you.

Facebook seems to be doing all the heavy lifting on the extremism front. Overweight/underweight problems are just stupid and it takes like 1 hour to explain how to eat properly and then you never have to deal with that again. Videos of people dying at least serve as a counterpoint to movies where nothing ever happens to people doing dangerous stuff.

Facebook's and other providers' moderation policies could differ a lot from yours. But these are the platforms where you can usually enable a form of parental control at least. Videos of people dying, like in an accident or war, might be at least real, but potentially still very damaging because of the lack of narrative. Another issue comes when the video also contains narrative: for example when they distance you from what you just saw, by saying how the people deserved death, were a lesser kind of people, and so on.

Regarding the overweight / underweight problems, do you think that all the over and underweight people, and proper weight people who still battle some eating disorder, just missed a good hour of talking to? I wonder what you'd say to them.

> Overweight/underweight problems are just stupid and it takes like 1 hour to explain how to eat properly and then you never have to deal with that again.

I do not think you have a firm grasp of how peer pressure works and how powerful it is. That's like saying "we told people that drugs are bad, so clearly nobody will do drugs anymore".

When that 1 hour of food education is pitted against 10s of hours of immersion in an online dysfunctional-eating subculture, what prevails?

Perhaps children need 1 hour, or more, "don't fall in with the wrong internet crowd and let weirdos claim possession of your identity" education. I am not sure what form that would take.

You have misunderstood me. It is up to the parents to explain to the children that there are such things and that one day they might see them by chance. Just as children can come into contact with drugs by chance through friends. It is up to the parents to prepare the children psychologically for these situations and to act wisely in this moment. For example, children could stop watching such videos early instead of continuing to watch them or simply say no to drugs because they are already prepared.

The idea of protecting children from all this through control is naive for two reasons: 1. you can't monitor children 100%. This leads to the fact that I can never prevent all things. Both in reality and on the net. 2. as adults, these children must have already thought about all this in order to act wisely. A child who moves out at 18 and has not yet dealt with it is completely on their own, although the adults would have had time to explain everything to the children.

And one more thing from pedagogy that contradicts what you said: children process only what they understand and is relevant to them. For example, if you explain to a 4-year-old child what rape is, the child will absorb almost nothing of it. For the child, sex and the sexual need is foreign. Thus, they cannot derive much information from the explanation.

I have seen a lot of sick stuff on the net as a teenager. For example, a beheading of a white journalist in the Middle East by Islamists. No one could have prevented me from clicking on the link friends sent me. However, it could have been explained to me that there are such things on the net and how that should be classified. In the end, it was up to me to classify it. And of course, such experiences could have led to anything. For example, racism.

I agree that control is not the solution for this problem, communication is. Still, I think there are things that are not simply facts of life, like having unlimited access to certain things, let's say porn, gore, hate speech, and other abusive material. At the end of the day, I don't claim to know how to solve this issue, certainly not with outlawing or backdooring encryption, but I acknowledge this problem.

Blocking content is not the way. I ran into Encyclopedia Dramatica and similar when I was like 12, and I wish that didn't happen, but there are no technical filters that would've stopped it. In my experience, kids will find a way around anything you could do, and they will want to fight what they perceive as unjust restrictions. Talk to them and communicate, you can't solve this with a technical solution.

Also, Discord is not end-to-end encrypted. (Messages are sent and scrollback is loaded over HTTPS, realtime messages are received over an HTTPS WebSocket. (They are compressed, but not encrypted any more than normal HTTPS.))

School devices are generally monitored/filtered way too much already. Fortunately until highschool I'd always been able to bypass blocking by changing my DNS or using HTTPS. My highschool has Fortinet though which seems to do SNI filtering so whenever I need to visit blocked things I have to use Tor. (There's probably a more efficient way but Tor works fine.)

> nothing of the extreme sort you could easily stumble upon

From your post, I divine that you don't really like porn much. I actually seek it out; but I've never "stumbled upon" anything more extreme than a model who looks as if she's 17. You don't find kiddieporn by stumbling around pornhub.

> but nothing of the extreme sort you could easily stumble upon by just being online today, etc).

As an adult I don't "stumble" onto the type of content you're talking about and I browse the web a lot. So if children are "stumbling" onto this content, maybe just maybe, they don't need unfettered Internet access and their own private devices.

I'm afraid banning encryption doesn't alleviate this very real issue. In the current ecosystem, nothing is stopping people to install whatever they want on their phones / computers (well, Apple does stop them, but aside from that), and so, it's just an install away that the child rejoins the encrypted network where everything is possible.

> I am horrified by what allowing the kid to roam Internet without filters may lead to now.

I worry too, my nephew is only three and is happily running around playing with dinosaurs.

With social media the way it is, young teens selling themselves on OnlyFans, different types of pornography/hentai imagery traded on Discord. It's all horrifying.

Downvoted why? That teenagers are not selling themselves on OnlyFans? No one should be selling "pics" of themselves for cash.

Hentai isn't traded on Discord? look around, because it's all there. Join a NSFW "lewd" discord and see for yourself.

Discord welcomes 13-year olds to join the platform. That someone that young can see that content is horrific.

Discord allows you to mark channels as NSFW and only allows users who are over 18 to view them.

Not that that ever stopped anyone though lmao.