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Comment by coding123 | Hacker News Reader

What are we protecting our kids from?

If we coddle people too much we risk people not... talking to other people. That's already happening. Maybe instead of tech the world should be focused on physical things, like new innovations in building technology. We have so many homeless people, in my opinion, because we're constantly focusing our attention on tech - which is a skill that a smaller percentage of the population has a brain for.

The trades need to come back, we need to beat SA in projects like "The Line" - and in the words of Joshua Weissman - But Better.

We're at risk for just continued class divisions and potentially a war because we're turning a bunch of coddled spoiled kids into a millionaires that are being looked at with massive disdain.

Maybe the internet should move back to being a background resource, not a precursor to ADHD.

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There are certainly things that may be worth trying to protect children from online, like extremely targeted advertising that gets presented like legitimate content. Kids won't necessarily be able to differentiate between the two, and it's definitely not okay for companies to be tracking and profiling them like they do (but pretend to not be doing). A great example is reddit or instagram using the same algorithms that recommend content in their main feeds to also inject advertising. They'll claim all of that data collection is just to provide a "better experience", but advertising companies love it.

I'm really not sure what else you're on about though.

> There are certainly things that may be worth trying to protect children from online, like extremely targeted advertising that gets presented like legitimate content.

I'm reminded strongly of cartoons which were created to sell toys. Still happens today.

> There are certainly things that may be worth trying to protect children from online, like extremely targeted advertising that gets presented like legitimate content.

It's better to block targeted advertising from adults too. Blocking ads for everyone in the household is only going to benefit everyone.

Kids already see tons of ads at movies, billboards, clothes people wear. Those superhero movies are made to sell toys and games. Stores are setup for kids to pressure parents.

Why are targeted ads the thing we should fear for our kids? Are we inventing problems? Kid watches superman movie and is shown an ad for batman vs here is an ad for a random movie. Adults and tracking is bigger issue, kids don't have positions in society to lose or secrets to keep or money to lose.

What are we fooling ourselves into believing we are protecting again?

This sort of willful ignorance is disparaging to see. Surely you must see a difference between an ad block that's clearly differentiated from the main program (ads before a movie plays, ad breaks during TV) and an endless feed of content that has no clear delineation between 'content' and 'product sponsership'. You might well be fine believing that billboards are the pinnacle of advertising, but there's been about 160 years worth of progress in the ad space since those were the big thing.

> Why are targeted ads the thing we should fear for our kids?

Again, you seem to be either defensive or intentionally misconstruing the point. These types of problems shouldn't invoke fear in people. I think you're getting yourself too mixed up in the idea that [X modern issue] is fearmongering and that nothing bad ever happens.

Kids are dumb and impressionable. If they spend 8 hours a day scrolling through an endless feed of cool posts featuring cool products being worn / used by cool people, they will absolutely get attached to the idea that it's normal and expected to have that thing. That's manipulative and disgusting marketing, and it's genuinely worrying that you don't seem to care at all.

> Kid watches superman movie and is shown an ad for batman vs here is an ad for a random movie

Again, intentionally misconstruing the idea... it's more like "kid spends 2/3 of their time awake being mined for data and having every interaction across every platform cross-correlated to ensure that *a company* can profit off of them". I suppose that's perfectly healthy and normal to you, that a company can know more about a child and exactly what they do and what they like than any human does.

Ad targeting identifies a lonely person with self esteem issues. Tells them that they'll be more popular and attractive if they consume product. They consume product and of course it doesn't actually help, but more advertisements are already lined up to explain that they're still feeling bad because they need to consume even more product. The ads show unrealistically happy and attractive people, to reinforce the self esteem issues and encourage the consumption of even more product.

This is a standard business practice for the advertising and marketing industry. It's evil.

Arguing we should spend more on housing the homeless, fine. But spending more resources on vanity projects like "the line"??? You lost me.

I mean we can spend billions building the next facebook, or billions building something that will last, is physical - incredible.

Now I don't know if "the line" will ever exist, but if it does get built, it will likely be the most impressive thing to exist.

If we compete, not only are we making homes, but an entirely new set of jobs for probably hundreds of thousands for potentially 20 years. Past that? Do the next build.

We've gotten to this amazing place with computers and... then we just figure out a billion ways we can flip bits and strings in a database endlessly and call it work... bleh.

We need to move on from Tech.

I imagine this technology would be deployed to prevent kids from visiting porn, drugs & alcohol, etc. sites. Which TBH seems fine, we already ID people at bars and adult shops.

The onus at that point is on the business to verify your age say, at the bar. This is like requiring every single person who gets into a car to prove they are of age enough to visit such establishments, regardless of whether or not they are even going to them.

We have the technology, might as well make the cars verify that we have a valid license to drive before we can use them.

There are limits to where a valid driver's license is required to drive a vehicle though. For example, offroad or on private property. You can even cross a road without having to have a drivers license.

Lets only allow the car to drive to government approved locations after requiring a government permit with approved route for the trip.

It would cut down on traffic!

We don't ID everyone only those who are borderline age wise. This would be everyone and remove privacy for all.

In my area, it's been an increasing trend that establishments that must verify age are doing so for all customers, even those who are obviously old enough.

And I don't have a problem with that. I'd have a problem if the age verification leaves a record in a database or is performed by a central entity rather than the employees of the establishment.

But we aren't writing down people's IDs when they enter a bar/adult shops and sending it to a database that can later be queried by governments.

There are a meaningful number of event security providers who are attempting to do exactly that.

They would also very much like you to install their venue app on your phone so they can track your location as you approach and exit the venue.

I have a better plan which 100% protects kids but doesn't require any verification: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37991197

Spamming this everywhere in this thread does nothing to strengthen your argument (which has a number of weaknesses you've neglected to address).

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