Hacker News Reader

Comment by tandr | Hacker News Reader

Random uneducated thoughts:

1. Government overriding parental rights in a state that is so proud of all possible "my rights"? I suspect some challenge in court for this law will happen sooner or later.

2. Closed circuit networks with some "private" server to chat between friends might get popular soon. There are enough quite capable 13y/o kids able to do so. Or 14yo, creating one for their little brother.

3. Not having a personal account might not prevent anything, as using parents' account is still possible.

4. Whole class on the same Signal chat room -- is it a "social media"?

5. Somehow parallels of Twitter getting banned during Arab Spring events come to mind.

View on HN

Your claim that parents have clicked yes to authorize all the kids accounts and activities is a total joke.

When you say "parental rights" - the issue is that parents DON'T have admin rights to their kids social media stuff.

Most of these companies do some kind of checkbox the 13 year old checks that confirms that if they are under 13 their parents have approved. The idea this is "parental rights" has to be a sick sick joke.

NONE of these companies send anyone anywhere to actually check that the parents OK'ed going on omegle etc.

Tweak the law so that the companies have to actually verify parental approval. Ie, something in person with parent and the kid. And that parents then are the admins on the account and get both see all activity and also control minutes / week of activity on the platform.

>NONE of these companies send anyone anywhere to actually check that the parents OK'ed going on omegle etc.

Why don't we instead ask how many parents actually check? Instead of requesting Apple/Google/Microsoft to help parents see their kid's browsing history from the get-go, we seem to be working towards internet based controls that will also impact the privacy and freedom of adults.

Why do we prohibit children from buying booze and guns? Isn't it incumbent upon the parents to prevent them from accessing those things?

Teenagers are too independent for parental control over their shopping trips to be a possibility, but here we're talking about 13 years and younger.

About point 2: in my neighborhood there's half a dozen kids, all aged 5-8, all communicating constantly during weekends using cheap, loud FRS walkie talkies some parent bought in a 10-pack off Amazon.

My point being that even without internet, or even without knowing how to type and barely able to read, social networks just pop into existence.

Soon: frantic op-eds about kids having key signing parties.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com