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Comment by ethanbond | Hacker News Reader

So just set it to off by default for everyone? That seems like a pretty pragmatic and very non-theatrical improvement. Of course it will have to contend with the theatrics of gamers whining about the immense hassle of a one-time settings change to enable voice chat.

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I think a difficulty here is that a lot of responders are imagining that all children are the same precocious 13 year old they were -forgetting the trusting 8 to 10 year olds they also were, and they are doing that thing where the edge cases start to dwarf the primary purpose in their minds.

Yeah apparently on the one hand, setting the default to Off would absolutely clobber Fortnite's engagement metrics and the law is unjust for this. On the other hand, setting the default to Off would not make a dent in children's usage of this product and therefore the law is useless.

Who cares about their engagement metrics? Like, what societal good does it do? I’m not sure the law is unjust because a company’s (non financial) metrics are impacted when the law acts as intended.

For the record, I’m pro games and against pearl clutching game ratings and “for the children” style laws, but I’m also not very sympathetic to big companies profits being a motivation for our lawmakers.

How does this prevent children from enabling voice chat?

The FTC's statement specifically says the issue is that it was on by default. Not that it could possibly be turned on by a child.

> The FTC’s $275 million proposed settlement with Epic Games, owner of Fortnite, alleges the company violated the law by collecting personal information from kids under 13 without parental consent and by enabling voice and text chat by default

The law is that <13 can not be voice recorded without parental consent, the way Fortnite broke this was by having it on by default. This does not mean the only way to break this is by having it on by default it's just what Fortnite was doing.

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2017/10/...

Even if "by default" was the law though that would seem to make things even more theatrical and less pragmatic anyways.

Right but could it possibly be the case that FTC knows there's no reasonable way to validate ages, and they'd not go after companies for "affirm you're not <13 years of age" so long as they make a reasonable effort to prevent it, or at least not set the default to be in clear violation of the law?

You know, alcohol, weed, and porn companies have managed just fine with user affirmations.

“I am 18+” is a well known joke as well and you can’t get purchased alcohol/weed without ID before it shows up (well, legally) because that’s when people realized they need a real measure not a fake one for show.

That the FTC would know there is no reasonable way would be a strong indicator it is indeed not a reasonable law. The default is definitely why Fortnite got fined, and is a reasonable reason to be fined, but it doesn’t make the law somehow effective it just makes Fortnite wrong for intentionally violating the law. I.e. they should have be fined but not because the law protects children effectively rather it’s not up to them to decide if it does on their own.

I don't even know what point you're trying to make now.

Changing the default will certainly reduce the number of kids who are subject to toxic game chat. FTC knows it, I know it, you know it, and Epic knows it.

I hate this word but it's about consent. If an 8 year old enables voice chat they're consenting to the shit that comes out of it. They may not fully understand what they're getting into, but that's a different issue.

perfect is the enemy of good here, the other poster is arguing that because it's not perfect and is easily circumvented that it will have no effect, and, as you said, we all know this isn't true.

"Off by default" is also a great way to make sure your feature is not used by the vast majority of people. It could easily lead to user attrition for new players looking for a social experience as well.

Maybe getting social experiences from places other than fortnite is a good thing?

Ah yes, the ol' "lower user engagement versus non-stop racial slurs piped into the ears of the 13 year olds you just marketed your highly addictive game to" dilemma

For what it's worth, games like Dota 2 already default all communication on new accounts to "off". It's a rite of passage for new players to play some games and realize they haven't heard anyone say anything. Then they find the setting and realize they're being relentlessly flamed for being new.

Once you climb out of the beginner ranks, literally everyone has found the communication settings and has adjusted them to their preferences.

I agree that most of the time, people don't change defaults. But isn't true for team games in my experience.

Ah yes, the classic "privacy/security/compliance hurts our funnel" argument. Said as if the former aren't more important than the latter.

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