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Comment by nonrandomstring | Hacker News Reader

Through most of history government always has the power, but the question is whether it has the legitimacy.

In this case it has the legitimacy, but lacks the power.

This is an unusual turn.

We need online safety for kids. The aims of this bill should obtain widespread support from everyone.

But instead of carefully researching and implementing difficult ideas, framing it properly and obtaining permission from the people - a remit to empower us to embrace online safety on our own terms - it's taken a strictly 20th Century "Mother knows best, think of the children" approach and made this a battle with Big Tech.

It is laughably "Yes, Prime-Minister" in its clumsiness. We have anachronistic throwbacks in charge.

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People might be more receptive if the UK government had shown any real intention of going after pedos before this. But the number of scandals and coverups indicate they dont. And this is little more than an excuse to make it easier to spy on their subjects.

Indeed. From Jimmy Saville to Prince Andrew to Rochdale gangs. Nobody in charge seems to be much inclined to protected savagely abused children.

We need road safety. But no genius in gouvernement has created a law that’s says it’s illegal to sell cars that CAN have accident. Generally the government goes after bad drivers instead of car companies.

I really don’t understand why Big Tech should magically stop every crime on earth: child abuse, racism, harassment, etc…

I think the supreme Zuck is a dick, but pulling out of the UK market was the right move.

I already have a remit to embrace online safety on my own terms - I can install a local filtering system if I choose to.

Of curse, but it's not terribly easy for the average person to put sophisticated filters into multiple content pipelines on every child's device (imagine having 4 or 5 kids of different ages and needs).

So a solution I think we brainstormed on the show was mandating open interoperable APIs that allow easy insertion of (presumably commercial or open source) plugins into the system, within the user's end-to-end digital estate, under the control of the user (parent) and completely rejecting the MITM and endpoint compromise via back-doors that the government naively proposed.

In many ways that would take a much bigger stick to Big Tech,

It also transitions the definition of "online harms" to those defined by the guardian/parent rather than problematically allowing the State to define harms and control the selectors.

What that says to me is that the government are dishonest about the real aims of the bill.

And further, as a consequence, it crushes my belief that the government even truly care out child safety except as a vehicle to greater tyranny.

> on every child's device

Devices only in public areas in the house. Dumbphones for emergencies.

> So a solution I think we brainstormed on the show was mandating open interoperable APIs that allow easy insertion of (presumably commercial or open source) plugins into the system, within the user's end-to-end digital estate, under the control of the user (parent) and completely rejecting the MITM and endpoint compromise via back-doors that the government naively proposed.

What you're proposing would likely enable the creation of some fairly invasive stalkerware. Don't forget that 1) just because a feature says it's for use by a parent on their child's device doesn't mean that it can only be used in that context, nor that 2) not all parents have their children's best interests in mind.

Online safety for kids begins at home. The problem is most parents are just too lazy.

Or too busy? In plenty of families both parents have to work hard to make ends meet.

Not helped by the fact that children are growing up in a completely different environment to the one their parents remember. Familiarizing myself with TikTok or whatever the kids are into these days would fill me with dread. And the way platforms work means my experience of them would differ dramatically from a child's anyway.

Wish I could upvote this harder lol. Parents really dont have enough time/energy to do this better than people who are trained in software/legislation. Especially if they have more than 2 kids/are single parents

So you trust the competence and the ethics of the government?

Id say i trust the competence of government in this arena more than that of parents on average. If someone is working on policy day in and day out for tech related things, they will have a better lay of the land than the average parent. However, you bring up a good point about ethics. A parent will definitely be far more acting in the best interest of their child compared to the government. An interesting quandry, good point

The other test is what can the “other” party do with any power you give the government. I define “other” as the party with viewpoints you are opposed to.

Sounds like we need a cultural shift away from governments involving themselves in parenting to governments ensuring parents have adequate time to parent.

>> Familiarizing myself with TikTok or whatever the kids are into these days would fill me with dread.

You don't need to. Don't give them devices until they're 16, and then implement the built in parental controls that come on every smartphone. When they are 18 and can buy their own, they can do what they want. I'm guessing your actual issue isn't familiarizing yourself with TikTok etc, but is instead facing conflict. I'm not saying it would be easy but pretending the above isn't a workable solution is self-deception.

No, I'm just trying to empathise with busy parents rather than write off parents who struggle with this stuff as lazy.

I know some parents give their children devices for safety reasons. For others, I guess they don't want their children to be socially isolated if all the other 14 year olds are chatting on messenger.

My only point was that it can be hard, and that not everyone who fails at it is lazy. It sounds like we are mostly in agreement.

Oh yeah I get that. My point was more that there is a simple solution that requires almost no time investment (i.e. a good option for busy parents). It might not be for everyone but it’s a solution that is to easily dismissed very often.

Modern devices are chock full of features that will work hard for parents while they aren’t even thinking about it. If the can’t be bothered to turn those features on, they shouldn’t be providing the devices in the first place.

This is just as lazy a take as the UK government though.

Many societal problems would be trivial if you could get perfect compliance from the population. You can't, so if you're interested in solving problems you need to be willing to grapple with the world as it is. So far as I can tell online safety has not meaningfully improved since the late 90s - "enforce safety at home" has been the advice for all of that time and it has never worked.

I don't have a solution but "blame the parents" seems to be a very clear non-answer without some plan for how to make creating safety at home more easily actionable.

It isn't, though. I'd say it's 50/50.

I started using the Internet in 1998, and the only advice my parents gave me was "Don't reveal anything about yourself online." (Thankfully I heeded their warning and still to this day I'm very guarded about disclosing any form of PII.)

Whilst admittedly a lot has changed in the last 25 years, I'd say only half the parents will actually try to keep their kids safe online.

The other half will sit around watching crappy reality TV shows getting angry at their five-year-old children finding porn on their own personal smartphone* because they don't want to look up how to prevent them from doing that, and instead absolve that responsibility to the gov't...

...who in turn use that as an excuse to censor the Internet.

*not entirely sure why a five-year-old needs a smartphone, but anyway.

> I'd say only half the parents will actually try to keep their kids safe online

Ok, so is our answer then to abandon safety for the remaining 50% of families? Do we think that's fine, or tragic? I'm going with the latter.

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